Saturday 22 August 2009

supermassive black hole - Can an SMBH recycle dark matter into energy?

The accretion of dark matter by a black hole is possible, but difficult. Unless its trajectory takes it into the black hole, then it will simply approach the black hole, speed up and then escape again, since non-interacting dark matter cannot dissipate energy in any way.



Presuming a black hole did accrete the dark matter then the energy possessed by the dark matter would become part of the rest mass energy of the black hole. So yes, the black hole would grow. Not sure what you mean by recycle the energy. Energy is always recycled (conserved). If you mean can the black hole lose its rest mass energy? I suppose it may do via Hawking radiation, but this is vanishingly small for a SMBH. The dark matter will also carry angular momentum into the BH and there are ways that this rotational energy can be extracted (e.g. the Penrose process https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_process ).

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