Instability of ultra-spinning black holes

Abstract

It has long been known that, in higher-dimensional general relativity, there are black hole solutions with an arbitrarily large angular momentum for a fixed mass. We examine the geometry of the event horizon of such ultra-spinning black holes and argue that these solutions become unstable at large enough rotation. Hence we find that higher-dimensional general relativity imposes an effective "Kerr-bound" on spinning black holes through a dynamical decay mechanism. Our results also give indications of the existence of new stationary black holes with "rippled" horizons of spherical topology. We consider various scenarios for the possible decay of ultra-spinning black holes, and finally discuss the implications of our results for black holes in braneworld scenarios. © SISSA/ISAS 2003.