Probing the Purely Ingoing Nature of the Black-hole Event Horizon

Abstract

One of the most fundamental results of general relativity is that the event horizon of black hole is purely ingoing. On the other hand, semiclassical-gravity effects, such as particle creation and the quantization of black-hole area, suggest that black holes can emit energy. Since a black hole is characterized by the presence of the event horizon, the emitted energy must be extracted from the black hole through its horizon. These considerations provide a motivation to test the validity of the purely ingoing nature of black-hole horizon. In this paper, we propose a novel test of the purely ingoing nature of black-hole horizon through gravitational-wave detection. We study the effects of hypothetical out-going gravitational waves to a perturbed black hole by supplementing the boundary condition of gravitational waves at the horizon with a phenomenological outgoing part. We show that this leads to extra excitation of the usual quasinormal modes of a perturbed black hole and continuous emission of gravitational waves. These additional signatures enable us to test the boundary condition(s) of the black-hole event horizon through gravitational-wave detection. Reanalysing the merger remnant of GW150914, we constrain the intensity of the outgoing gravitational-horizon flux to be $ < 10^{40} \rm W$, which is roughly $ 10^{-9} $ of peak luminosity of GW150914.