Super-Penrose collisions are inefficient - a Comment on: Black hole fireworks: ultra-high-energy debris from super-Penrose collisions

Abstract

In a paper posted on the arXiv a few weeks ago Berti, Brito and Cardoso \cite{Berti+14} suggest that ultra-high-energy particles can emerge from collisions in a black hole's ergosphere. This can happen if the process involves a particle on an outgoing trajectory very close to the black hole. Clearly such a particle cannot emerge from the black hole. It is argued \cite{Berti+14} that this particle can arise in another collision. Thus the process involves two collisions: one in which an outgoing particle is produced extremely close to the horizon, and a second one in which energy is gained. The real efficiency of this process should take into account, therefore, the energy needed to produce the first particle. We show here that while this process is kinematically possible, it requires a deposition of energy that is divergently large compared with the energy of the escaping particle. Thus, in contradiction to claims of infinitely high efficiencies, the efficiency of the combined process is in fact extremely small, approaching zero for very high output energies. Even under more general conditions than those considered in \cite{Berti+14} the total energy gain never diverges, and is larger only by a factor of a few than the energy gain of the original collisional Penrose process that takes place between two infalling particles \cite{Piran+75,PiranShaham77,Bejger+12}