Pith. sign in

REVIEW 5 cited by

Massive spin-2 fields on black hole spacetimes: Instability of the Schwarzschild and Kerr solutions and bounds on the graviton mass

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 1304.6725 v3 pith:7CXQD6LP submitted 2013-04-24 gr-qc astro-ph.HEhep-th

Massive spin-2 fields on black hole spacetimes: Instability of the Schwarzschild and Kerr solutions and bounds on the graviton mass

classification gr-qc astro-ph.HEhep-th
keywords massiveblackkerrschwarzschildspin-2boundsfieldsgeometry
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
0 comments
read the original abstract

Massive bosonic fields of arbitrary spin are predicted by general extensions of the Standard Model. It has been recently shown that there exists a family of bimetric theories of gravity - including massive gravity - which are free of Boulware-Deser ghosts at the nonlinear level. This opens up the possibility to describe consistently the dynamics of massive spin-2 particles in a gravitational field. Within this context, we develop the study of massive spin-2 fluctuations - including massive gravitons - around Schwarzschild and slowly-rotating Kerr black holes. Our work has two important outcomes. First, we show that the Schwarzschild geometry is linearly unstable for small tensor masses, against a spherically symmetric mode. Second, we provide solid evidence that the Kerr geometry is also generically unstable, both against the spherical mode and against long-lived superradiant modes. In the absence of nonlinear effects, the observation of spinning black holes bounds the graviton mass to be smaller than 5x10^{-23} eV.

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.

Forward citations

Cited by 5 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Numerical polology: towards next-generation model-building for cosmology

    astro-ph.CO 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Numerical polology framework samples coupling space to discover ghost-free tensor field theories up to rank three for cosmology, then applies resulting priors to black hole superradiance, dynamical dark energy, and GW data.

  2. Non-Fierz-Pauli bimetric theory from quadratic curvature gravity on Einstein manifolds

    gr-qc 2019-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Quadratic curvature gravity on Einstein manifolds decouples into massless and non-Fierz-Pauli massive gravity sectors, enabling observational constraints on its parameters with noted tension for the Weyl term.

  3. Superradiance -- the 2020 Edition

    gr-qc 2015-01 unverdicted novelty 4.0

    Black-hole superradiance extracts energy via the ergoregion and can trigger instabilities with applications to dark matter, beyond-Standard-Model physics, and laboratory analogs.

  4. When Black Holes Can Wear Pants

    gr-qc 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 3.0

    Theoretical investigation of black hole fragmentation possibilities beyond standard GR constraints, with relevance to primordial black holes and mergers.

  5. Testing General Relativity with Present and Future Astrophysical Observations

    gr-qc 2015-01 accept novelty 2.0

    A review summarizing modified theories of gravity, their effects on compact objects, existing bounds from astrophysical observations, and the promise of future gravitational wave tests for strong-field gravity.