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  • Open Access

Black Hole Supercolliders

Andrew Mummery1,* and Joseph Silk2,3,4,†

  • 1Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PU, United Kingdom
  • 2Institut d’Astrophysique, UMR 7095 CNRS, Sorbonne Universite, 98bis boulevard Arago, 75014 Paris, France
  • 3William H. Miller III Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA
  • 4Beecroft Institute of Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3RH, United Kingdom

  • *Contact author: andrew.mummery@physics.ox.ac.uk
  • †Contact author: silk@iap.fr
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 221401 – Published 3 June, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.221401

Abstract

We show that collisions between particles free falling from infinity and a disk of material plunging off the retrograde innermost stable circular orbit of a near-extremal Kerr black hole is the unique astronomically natural way in which to create a gravitational particle accelerator with center of mass energies at the tens to hundreds of teraelectronvolt range; in other words, a supercollider.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 221401– Published 3 June, 2025
  • Received 29 November 2024
  • Accepted 11 April 2025
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