Gravitational Larmor precession

Chandrachur Chakraborty; Parthasarathi Majumdar

doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-023-11858-4

2023 Impact factor 4.2

Particles and Fields

Open Access

Eur. Phys. J. C (2023) 83: 714
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-023-11858-4

Letter

Gravitational Larmor precession

Chandrachur Chakraborty¹^a and Parthasarathi Majumdar²

¹ Manipal Centre for Natural Sciences, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, 576104, Manipal, India
² Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Jadavpur, 700032, Kolkata, India

^a chandrachur.c@manipal.edu

Received: 27 March 2023
Accepted: 23 July 2023
Published online: 9 August 2023

Abstract

Inspired by the reported existence of substantive magnetic fields in the vicinity of the central supermassive black holes in Sagittarius A* and Messier 87*, we consider test particle motion in the spacetime close to a generic spherical black hole in the presence of magnetic fields in its vicinity. Modelling such a spacetime in terms of an axisymmetric, non-rotating Ernst–Melvin–Schwarzschild black hole geometry with appropriate parameters, we compute the geodesic nodal-plane precession frequency for a test particle with mass, for such a spacetime, and obtain a non-vanishing result, surpassing earlier folklore that only axisymmetric spacetimes with rotation (non-vanishing Kerr parameter) can generate such a precession. We call this magnetic field-generated phenomenon Gravitational Larmor Precession. What we present here is a Proof of Concept incipient assay, rather than a detailed analysis of supermassive black holes with magnetic fields in their neighbourhood. However, for completeness, we briefly discuss observational prospects of this precession in terms of available magnetic field strengths close to central black holes in galaxies.

© The Author(s) 2023

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