Hilbert repulsion in the Reissner-Nordstr\"om and Schwarzschild spacetimes

Abstract

Studying particle motion in the gravitational field of a black hole from the perspective of different observers is important for separating the coordinate artifacts from the physical phenomena. In this paper, we show that a freely falling test particle exhibits gravitational repulsion by a black hole as seen by an asymptotic observer, whereas nothing of the kind happens as recorded by a freely falling observer or by an observer located at a finite distance from the event horizon. This analysis is carried out for a general Reissner-Nordstr\"om, an extremal Reissner-Nordstr\"om, and a Schwarzschild black hole. We are lead to conclude that the origin of these bizarre results lies in the fact that the quantities measured by the different observers are neither Lorentz scalars nor gauge invariant.