The superradiant instability regime of the spinning Kerr black hole

Abstract

Spinning Kerr black holes are known to be superradiantly unstable to massive scalar perturbations. We here prove that the instability regime of the composed Kerr-black-hole-massive-scalar-field system is bounded from above by the dimensionless inequality $M\mu < m \cdot \sqrt{{{2(1+\gamma) (1-\sqrt{1-\gamma^2}) - \gamma^2} \over {4\gamma^2}}}$, where $\{\mu,m\}$ are respectively the proper mass and azimuthal harmonic index of the scalar field and $\gamma\equiv r_-/r_+$ is the dimensionless ratio between the horizon radii of the black hole. It is further shown that this {\it analytically} derived upper bound on the superradiant instability regime of the spinning Kerr black hole agrees with recent {\it numerical} computations of the instability resonance spectrum.