Quantum effects prohibit the formation of black holes by high concentrations of intense light, physicists say

For the past seventy years, astrophysicists have theorized the existence of ‘kugelblitze’, black holes caused by extremely high concentrations of light.

They speculated that these special black holes may be related to astronomical phenomena such as dark matter, and that in the distant future it is even suggested that they could be the power source for hypothetical spaceship engines.

However, new theoretical physics research by a team of researchers from the University of Waterloo and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid shows that kugelblitze is impossible in our current universe. Their research, entitled ‘No black holes from light’, will be published on the New York University website arXiv preprint server and coming soon Physical Assessment Letters.

“The best-known black holes are those created by huge concentrations of ordinary matter collapsing under its own gravity,” says Eduardo Martín-Martínez, professor of applied mathematics and mathematical physics at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

‘Because in Einstein’s theory of general relativity, any form of energy warps space-time, it has long been speculated that a massive concentration of energy in the form of light could lead to a similar collapse. However, this prediction was made without taking quantum effects into account.”

The team built a mathematical model, taking into account quantum effects, that showed that the concentration of light needed to create Kugelblitze would be tens of orders of magnitude greater than that observed in quasars, the brightest objects in our universe.

“Long before you could reach that light intensity, certain quantum effects would occur first,” says José Polo-Gómez, a Ph.D. candidate in applied mathematics and quantum information. “That strong light concentration would lead to the spontaneous creation of particles such as electron-positron pairs, which would move out of the area very quickly.”

Although the conditions needed to achieve such an effect are impossible to test on Earth with current technology, the team can be confident in the accuracy of their predictions because they rely on the same mathematical and scientific principles that drive positron emission tomography (PET) enable scans.

“One way to understand this phenomenon is to think of the destruction of matter and antimatter, such as what happens during PET scans. Electrons and their antiparticles (positrons) can annihilate each other and break up into pairs of photons, or light ‘particles’ .’ Martín-Martínez said.

“Our results are a consequence of the phenomenon called ‘vacuum polarization’ and the Schwinger effect, and while it can be difficult to explain them in a few words, a useful way to think about them is this: phenomenon that we have predicted that would prevent the creation of black holes from light is in many ways similar to the opposite of the disintegration phenomenon between matter and antimatter that occurs in a PET scan. When there is a large concentration of photons, they can break up into electron-positron pairs, which are quickly scattered, carrying away the energy and preventing gravitational collapse.”

While Kugelblitze’s impossibility may be disappointing to astrophysicists, the discovery is a major achievement in the kind of fundamental physics research made possible by the collaboration between applied mathematics, the Perimeter Institute and the Institute for Quantum Computing in Waterloo.

“While these discoveries may not yet be put into practice, we are laying the foundation for the technological innovations of our descendants,” said Polo-Gómez. “The science behind PET scanning machines was once just as theoretical, and now there is one in every hospital.”