From the archive · September 26, 2012

Weighing light with black holes

Group research used spinning black holes to place new limits on the possible mass of the photon.

Research by members of the group used observations of spinning black holes to constrain the possible mass of the photon. Ultralight massive bosons can trigger a “black-hole bomb”: an instability that rapidly extracts rotational energy. The existence of rapidly spinning black holes therefore rules out part of the possible mass range.

The work appeared in Physical Review Letters and a companion Physical Review D paper. It was covered by Ole Miss News, selected for an APS Physics Synopsis, and discussed by New Scientist, Phys.org, and ScienceDaily.

The resulting bound was about one hundred times tighter than the previously accepted limit.