PHYSICAL REVIEW D

VOLUME 43, NUMBER 2

15 JANUARY 1991

Kerr black holes as a Carnot engine

Osamu Kaburaki*
Theoretical Astrophysics,
California Institute

of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125

Mizusatva,

Isao Okamoto
Division

of Theoretical

Astrophysics,

National Astronomical Observatory, (Received 5 June 1990)

Itvate 023, Japan

It is shown through a series of thought experiments that rotating black holes immersed in a strong magnetic field can act, in principle, as a Carnot engine. In contrast with the original Carnot engine, however, work is extracted in the form of electric power, so that a Kerr hole actually functions as an electric powerhouse which is driven by the energy of Hawking's thermal radiation. The whole cycle consists of (i) isothermal spin-down, (ii) adiabatic spin-up, (iii) isothermal spin-up and (iv) adiabatic spin-down processes of the hole. The maximum efficiency of this engine is attained if step (iii) can be performed in the extreme Kerr state.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Rotating black holes have attracted great attention in the field of astrophysics as possible central engines of active galactic nuclei. ' The compactness of black holes makes it possible to liberate a large amount of gravitational energy of accreting matter in the neighborhood of their event horizons. Moreover, it was pointed out by Penrose that the rotational energy of a Kerr hole is extractable in principle. Although the process suggested by now called the Penhim as an illustration of this fact irrose process was believed to be astrophysically relevant, a viable mechanism has been proposed later by Blandford and Znajek as an electromagnetic extraction mechanism. Thorne and his co-workers extensively discussed the latter process and related problems from a viewpoint of "3+1"formalism of general relativity. ' It has also been proposed that the presence of an electromagnetic field around Kerr holes can modify the original Penrose process significantly. According to the no-hair theorem of black holes, a Kerr hole is completely specified only by its mass and angular momentum, M and J. Therefore all other quantities associated with the hole can be expressed in terms of these two quantities. This fact is reminiscent of thermodynamics. The similarity in the behavior of black-hole area and of entropy in thermodynamics was first made He also derived a temperature explicit by Bekenstein. which is proportional to the surface gravity. In order for this analogy between black-hole mechanics and thermodynamics to be complete, however, black holes should emit thermal radiation. But this was thought to be inhibited by the nature of the black-hole event horizon. A striking breakthrough was achieved when Hawking discovered that a black hole can emit thermal radiation quantum mechanically with a temperature given by

where gH is the surface gravity of the hole, and A and k are the Planck and Boltzmann constants, respectively. Corresponding to this relation, the entropy of the hole is defined by

k 4

3
2
y

(2

P: RG

where 3 is the surface area of the hole, l~ is the Planck length, G is the gravitational constant, and c is the light velocity. In terms of these quantities the first law of black-hole thermodynamics is expressed as
C2dM

= T dS+Q dJ,

with and being the angular velocity and the angular momentum of a Kerr hole. Comparing this equation with the first law of thermodynamics for a gas in a container, we can see the correspondence, c M+ E, A~ p, and J~V, where E, p, and V are the internal energy, the pressure, and the volume of the gas. The second law states that

dS ~0

(4)

&gH

2~k
43

for any change of isolated systems which consist of black holes and normal matter. Pushing ahead the above correspondence between a Kerr hole and a gas in a container, we show in the following sections that the Carnot cycles can be performed also for this rotating black hole and hence work can be extracted in the course of the cycle. In contrast with the Penrose process, however, the consequence of this process is not an extraction of rotational energy from the hole. The hole returns to its initial state after a complete cycle. Instead, a certain amount of thermal energy in the Hawking radiation held in a thermal bath is converted into work. In the present paper, we restrict our attention
340

1991

The American Physical Society

43

ES AS A CARNOT ENGINE ERR BLACK HOLFS

341

t"e mainlyy to the

discuss' 111a 1 1iscus e. e believe ve that this probl 1 ma also su%cient acad emic interest b y itself, but we e may ope that it open P g P ysical applications.
'
I

"' 1n-principle" e

'

II.

CARNOT CYCLE IN

J-0 PLANE

The entro py a and temperature ure of a Kerr hole e are ex' i y in terms of its an n anpressed implicitl t b y th e relations'

A'S

2~k
c
4GQ,

(AGNI [I

(fiGA S/7rkc Slvrkc

)]'

+2(2vrkT/A)

[0
S and
q

2(2 +(2~kT/A) nkT 2~kT/A)[A + (2~k T/A ) ] ' i

n

The conto tours of constant The contours of con

ig. 1.
p ane.

intersection

i es at the orig besides

. Thi. s
'

e origin with the tan g

opes are

J'
n

) 0) exist only
d
h
II

nstant-T
th
h

curve

a ing oles) are distributed o rom the up r left to th lo h'1 ol g

ing to

at

go

t eyond

f Therefor e ore, two pairs ' Tz thermal curves T and T (T p' curves fo nontrivial interave in general four 2 ] affairs is expressed e schematically in of aff'a' a eo sections. The state ' n hole is q K o a Kerr Fi'g. 2. . If the changee of the ro e er we consider onl g in which the state of bla cyc e is the one i 1n th h o 1e cycle consists Fi 2 Th , i.e. , iso 1 h d own, adiabatic spin-u O' i P n-up, P n- d own processes. '" d b
p ane.
&

yp

ese

',

p curves leave th e origin along ax' s. en s and approach the as a maximum they are viewed as fu , eac es. heat for con s ec' a w ich the hole's specific
g

th's fo b'dd

'

Isothermal

spin-down

process

Such

ica pro erties

any pair urves a ways has one more

p of temperature T . aw ing radiation o n ro After putting a K err h ole of tern era 't y n angular velo ci th b S ' 't than the smaller htl is sli t ich w ig , y

lt

&

Sp

oW Schwarzschild

Holes

0=(

FIG. 1. The contours of constant e c K r h o 1es (T=O) ar

es,
w ile

FIG. 2. A blackp

a ic

rt

hild hol

on y one in-

ss system during

a cyc 1e is

w ic can be extracted from h AdJ (the area enclosed b y the

tio b i id est h eoneatth e origin.

path ABCD A).

342

OSAMU KABURAKI AND ISAO OKAMOTO

43

hole's rotation 0, with their axes of rotation common to each other [Fig. 3(a)]. In this situation, the thermal particles evaporating and from the hole have the average angular velocity the particles absorbed from the heat bath by the hole have 0( I 5). As a consequence, the hole is gradually spun down within a period of the thermal relaxation time. By keeping the rotation of the thermal bath always slightly smaller than that of the hole, we can lead the state of the hole from 3 to 8. During this process the hole absorbs a finite amount of entropy AS =Sz S&. (ii) Adiabatic spin-up process (B~C). In this process the black hole should be thermally disconnected from the outside world in order not to emit nor absorb thermal particles of any kind. This may be accomplished by set-

ting a spherical mirror somewhere in between the event which is located horizon and the stretched horizon slightly above the true horizon, covering the former cornpletely. Then, an axisymmetric magnetic field around the hole's rotation axis is applied. We always adjust this field not to be forced out from the hole; i.e. , there is no poloidal Aux which does not penetrate the hole. It is also assumed that the field is not so strong as to alter the thermodynamical state of the hole, i.e. , as to a8'ect the background Kerr metric. Next, the hole is connected to an external battery which is placed sufficiently far from its horizon, and has a voltage Vz and a negligible internal resistance. In order to lead the current to and from the hole's stretched horizon on which all the electromagnetic properties of the

Q(I-e}

(zQ 7
~ ~

.
~

zs

'

.
~

Tl

(a)

Q(l g}

(~~3

T2

(c)
FIG. 3. An illustration of the conceptual setups which are used in performing detailed explanation of individual steps, see the text.
the four steps in a black-hole Carnot cycle. For the

KERR BLACK HOLES AS A CARNOT ENGINE

hole are endowed, two devices are attached to the hole. One is a north-polar pipe whose surface coincides with one of the poloidal magnetic (lux tube [see Fig. 3(b)]. The other is an equatorial thin disk. Both are made of perfectly conducting material and divided into a large number of continuously placed, infinitely narrow rings. They are, therefore, able to rotate differentially keeping the electric contact between any pair of adjacent rings. We arrange the pipe and the disk to be at rest in the zero anThe gular momentum observer's (ZAMO's) frame. ' leading wires which connect the battery to the outer edges of the pipe and the disk are also infinitely conducting and are placed sufficiently far from the hole. The Kerr hole in a magnetic field acts as a unipolar inductor and generates an electromotive force (EMF)

343

'"

VH

~y2 Q = B,coHp~d 0, c oo

temperature of the thermal bath is lower, i.e., T2 & Ti, and that the angular velocity of the bath is always kept slightly faster than that of the hole, i.e. , Q(1+5). As a result of emission and absorption of the Hawking radiation in a quasiequilibrium state, the hole is spun up gradually and the excess entropy is transferred to the thermal bath. Therefore, the force acting on the bath to rotate it with a required angular velocity should do positive work. (iv) Adiabatic spin-down process (D~A). The global setup is similar to that in the adiabatic spin-up case. The only difference is in the point that an electric load with resistance Rz is inserted in the external circuit instead of a battery, so that the current is driven by the hole's EMF. The load may actually be a special type of electric motor which can be operated by the special type of current mentioned in (ii) above. The total current Aowing in this circuit is

where all quantities are evaluated at the surface of the stretched horizon, and B is the normal component of the magnetic field, co = g &&, and p = g & in BoyerLindquist coordinates. The lower limit of the integration, 6j0, denotes the colatitude of the polar pipe's surface touching to the stretched horizon. The nonvanishing radius of the pipe guarantees the finiteness of the hole's total resistance:

I=

Va

RH+R~

After completing a cycle the hole returns to its initial state. Nevertheless, net work is extracted from the system, which amounts to

If a current flows in this circuit, the Lorentz force at the stretched horizon exerts a torque on the hole. However, there is no torque on the polar pipe since the current Aows along the poloidal field, and on the equatorial disk since there is no magnetic Aux. Although there is a torque on the portion of the leading wire which is immersed in the magnetic field, the torque cannot do work on the wire since it is fixed. In order for the torque at the horizon to spin up the hole, the external battery should drive a current against the hole's EMF. Therefore the voltage of the battery must be larger than that of the hole, i.e. , V~~ & V~ ~. In this situation, we can calculate the total current from Kirchhoff's second law as
~ ~

The area in the J-0 plane enclosed by the closed path ABCDA rejects this work. It is the work done by the motor minus the work by the external battery and by the force keeping the thermal bath's angular velocity at the value near $1 in the processes (i) and (iii). Analogously to the case of ordinary Carnot engines, the extracted energy comes from the hotter bath. The efficiency of our cycle is also given by the same expression as in the usual case:

w
Q)

Qi

Q2
Q)

(12)

VH+ Vx
RH
where the sign of the current is defined as positive in the direction of the hole's EMF. The entropy generation on the hole's surface through the Joule dissipation of the current can be kept negligible as far as this spin-up process proceeds sufficiently slowly. This point will be discussed in the next section. Another remark to be made is that the external battery is special in the following sense. Namely, it should drive, say, electrons and positrons in the opposite directions from its negative and positive terminals, respectively. This is due to the fact that current-carrying electrons cannot come out from the hole's horizon to close the electric current. (iii) Isothermal spin-up process (C~D). The global setup is similar to that in the isothermal spin-down case. The differences from that case are in the points that the

where Q denotes the net energy exchanged between the hole and the thermal baths. It is evident from this expression that the maximum efficiency q= 1 is attained when the lower-temperature state corresponds to an extreme Kerr hole. Actually, however, the maximum efficiency would not be attained even in principle for two main reasons. One is that it seems impossible to produce an extreme Kerr hole. ' The other is that even if such a hole is produced the adiabatic processes considered above cannot be operated because the magnetic Aux threading the hole becomes zero when the hole is maximally rotating. '

III. DISCUSSIDN QF EACH PROCESS

In both isothermal and adiabatic processes introduced in the preceding section, there are a few problems which should be considered more carefully. We discuss such
problems here. A quasiequilibrium between the hole and the heat bath has been assumed in steps (i) and (iii). In order for this assumption to hold with good accuracy, the characteristic time for the changes in these processes should be

OSAMU KABURAKI AND ISAO OKAMOTO

43

much longer than the thermal relaxation time of the system. The latter may be characterized by the evaporation time' of a Schwarzchild hole in a vacuum:

I e-..
27Tct)H
g

(19)

8. 7X 10
H

4. 8X10

M sec for M M sec for 10'

)) 10'

g,

g))M))5X10'

g.

Then, the mass of a black hole which evaporates within the present age of the Universe is in the range 5 X 10' ~ ~ g M& 7 X 10' g. The result changes only by a factor of even for extreme Kerr holes. Therefore, the ideal isothermal processes can be performed in the real Universe only for mini-black-holes whose masses are much smaller than Mz. Another point to be mentioned for these processes is the stability of the thermal equilibrium between the hole and the bath. As is well known, the specific heat for constant is always negative for any Kerr holes. ' This means that the equilibrium is unstable for a given 0, as far as the energy in the thermal bath is infinite. However, the instability can be avoided' by restricting the volume of the bath such that

(13)

The vectors es and e& are the unit vectors in the 8 and P directions. It can be seen from (17) that the quasistatic condition requires to be of order ~ since 0 and VH are quantities of order unity. Then, Eq. (18) tells us that the entropy production rate is a quantity of order ~ and hence is negligible compared with dJ/dt. Thus we

-2

have
2

dM dt

dS
dt

dJ
dt

dJ
dt

(20)

'

for any change in steps (ii) and (iv). In the adiabatic spin-up process, the voltage of the external battery should be set at a value
VX

= VH(1+ e),

(21)

220 4

55

gG p 5

(14)

where e is a positive quantity of order ~ '. Then we have from (9) that e( VH/RH ) =0(r ') and this current really spins up the hole as is confirmed from (17). On the contrary, the current should have a positive value, i.e. , I=O(r in the adiabatic spin-down process. This can be realized in Eq. (10) by setting the resistance of the external load infinitely large:

I=

(0,

))0,
.

where U is the total energy of the hole and the bath, o. is defined by
2

R~=O(r)

(22)

k4

c'A'

(lib

1lf +

ll )

and n&, n&, and n, are the numbers of bosons with nonzero spin, of fermions, and of scalar particles, respectively. Of course, the thermal energy of the heat bath should not be so large as to aff'ect the background Keri metric. This requires that AS M/T. Turning our attention to the adiabatic processes, we first discuss the entropy production due to the current dissipation on the surface of the hole. We define the finite change in the hole's angular momentum in an adiabatic process by

There is another factor in the above-mentioned electrodynamic processes which contributes to the increase of the hole's entropy. It is the infall of current-carrying particles into the hole. This time, however, we cannot reduce the total increase of entropy by preforming the process infinitely slowly, since the total number of particles swallowed by the hole does not depend on ~. In order for this effect to be negligible, the increase in the irreducible mass due to the particle infall should be much smaller than the change in the hole's total mass during the electrodynamical process:
b, (c

M)))26(c

m,

),

(23)

where
b, (c'M)=

(16)
noting that the rate dJ/dt can generally change sign even in a process of monotonic change in A. Any ideal quasistatic process attains finite AJ by taking an infinitely long time ~ with the rate of change infinitely small, i.e. ,

f 'lIl ,
V
2

(24)
(25)

b(c m, )=

j lIdr,

Idj/dtl=0(r

').

In our current circuit, the rates of change in the rotational and irreducible masses are given, respectively, by

and e and m, are the charge and mass of an electron, respectively. We have assumed for simplicity that the positive component of the current-carrying particles is posi-

dJ = 0
dt

H(cFH

XB). SHe~&A =IVH,

=IVH

(17)

trons. The inequality (23) is reduced to a criterion for the strength of the surface magnetic field,

T ds = fHEH dt

cPHdA

I RH,

(18)

B. B
by using expression

(26)
(7) for VH and that for the gravita-

tional radius,
~H

where dA is the infinitesimal element of the hole's surface area, VH=IRH is the voltage drop across the hole, and 8H is the surface current on the hole which is given by

2GM c2

]+h

(27)

43

KERR BLACK HOLES AS A CARNOT ENGINE

which measures

345

where h is a nondimensional parameter the rapidness of the hole's rotation

2GM 0
C

The critical field is given by

(29)
where the numerical value has been calculated for the case of extreme Kerr holes (h= I). The physical meaning of (26) is evident. We have to reduce the total current for suppressing the total number of infalling particles. In order to keep the Lorentz force unchanged, however, we need a strong magnetic field in compensation. The required field strength is reasonably weak for a 10' black hole of a solar mass but becomes as large as G for M-5X10' g. Therefore, the critical field is uncomfortably large for a mini-black-hole of mass M ((Mz which can realize an ideal isothermal process. Under such strong fields various quantum effects may make the

situation complex, and moreover the background metric may also be affected by the fields. At any rate, it seems very difficult to perform an ideal cycle in the real Universe. are not so However, these circumstances different from the case of usual thermodynamics. Also in the latter case, an ideal process requires an infinitely long time and there is no ideal Carnot engine working in the world. The adiabatic spin-down process described in step (iv) of the black-hole Carnot cycle is an idealized limit (Rz~ ~) of the Blandford-Znajek process. In this sense, step (ii) of the same cycle may be called the inverse Blandford-Znajek process. It may also be an interesting task to find an astrophysical counterpart of this process in black-hole-accretion disk systems, but this belongs to a future investigation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

One of the authors (O. K. ) would like to thank K.S. Thorne for his discussions, suggestions, and encouragement. He is also grateful to R.D. Blandford and E.S. Phinney for their discussions and interest in this work.

*Present address: Astronomical Institute, Faculty of Science, Tohoku University, Sendai, Miyagi 980, Japan. For a general review, see M. C. Begelman, R. D. Blandford, and M. J. Rees, Rev. Mod. Phys. 56, 255 (1984). 2R. Penrose, Riv. Nuovo Cirnento 1, 252 (1969); R. Penrose and R. M. Floyd, Nature Phys. Sci. 229, 177 (1971). 3R. D. Blandford and R. L. Znajek, Mon. N. R. Astron. Soc. 179, 433 (1977); also, see E. S. Phinney, Ph. D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1983. 4K. S. Thorne and D. A. Macdonald, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 198, 339 (1982); D. A. Macdonald and K. S. Thorne, ibid. 198, 345 (1982); D. A. Macdonald and W. -M. Suen, Phys. Rev. D. 32, 848 (1985). 5K. S. Thorne, R. H. Price, and D. A. Macdonald, Black Holes: Press, New (Yale University Paradigm The Membrane Haven, 1986). See, for example, S. M. Wagh and N. Dadhich, Phys. Rep. 183, 137 (1989). 7See, for example, B. Carter, in General Relativity: an Einstein Centenary Survey, edited by S. W. Hawking and W. Israel (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 1979), p.

8J. D. Bekenstein, Phys. Rev. D 7, 233 (1973); 9, 3292 (1974); also see J. M. Bardeen, B. Carter, and S. W. Hawking, Cornmun. Math. Phys. 31, 161 (1973). S. W. Hawking, Nature (London) 248, 30 (1974); Commun. Math. Phys. 25, 152 (1975); Phys. Rev. D 13, 191 (1976). I. Okamoto and O. Kaburaki, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 247, 244 (1990). "Originally this idea appeared in J. M. Bardeen, W. H. Press, and S. A. Teukolsky, Astrophys. J. 178, 347 (1972). See, for example, R. Penrose, in General Relativity: an Einstein Centenary Survey, edited by S. W. Hawking and W. Israel (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 1979), p. 581. J. Bicak and L. Dvorak, Phys. Rev. D 22, 2933 (1980); J. Bica.k and V. Janis, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 212, 899 (1985). D. N. Page, Phys. Rev. D 13, 198 (1976); 14, 3260 (1976); 16, 2402 (1977). ~~P. C. W. Davies, Rep. Prog. Phys. 41, 1313 (1978). 6S. W. Hawking, Phys. Rev. D 13, 191 (1976); G. W. Gibbons and M. J. Perry, Proc. R. Soc. London A358, 467 (1978).

294.