When an incident wave scatters o of an obstacle, it is partially reflected and partially transmitted. In theory, if the obstacle is rotating, waves can be amplified in the process, extracting energy from the scatterer. Here we describe in detail the first laboratory detection of this phenomenon, known as superradiance [1][2][3][4] . We observed that waves propagating on the surface of water can be amplified after being scattered by a draining vortex. The maximum amplification measured was 14% ± 8%, obtained for 3.70 Hz waves, in a 6.25-cm-deep fluid, consistent with the superradiant scattering caused by rapid rotation. We expect our experimental findings to be relevant to black-hole physics, since shallow water waves scattering on a draining fluid constitute an analogue of a black hole [5][6][7][8][9][10] , as well as to hydrodynamics, due to the close relation to over-reflection instabilities [11][12][13] . In water, perturbations of the free surface manifest themselves by a small change ξ(t, x) of the water height. On a flat bottom, and in the absence of flow, linear perturbations are well described by superpositions of plane waves of definite frequency f (Hz) and wavevector k (rad m −1 ). When surface waves propagate on a changing flow, the surface elevation is generally described by the sum of two contributions ξ = ξ I + ξ S , where ξ I is the incident wave produced by a source, for example, a wave generator, while ξ S is the scattered wave, generated by the interaction between the incident wave and the background flow. In this work, we are interested on the properties of this scattering on a draining vortex flow which is assumed to be axisymmetric and stationary. At the free surface, the velocity field is given in cylindrical coordinates by v = v r e r + v θ e θ + v z e z .Due to the symmetry, it is appropriate to describe ξ I and ξ S using polar coordinates (r, θ). Any wave ξ(t, r, θ ) can be decomposed into partial waves 10,14 ,where m ∈ Z is the azimuthal wavenumber and ϕ f ,m (r) denotes the radial part of the wave. Each component of this decomposition has a fixed angular momentum proportional to m, instead of a fixed wavevector k. (To simplify notation, we drop the indices f ,m in the following.) Since the background is stationary and axisymmetric, waves with different f and m propagate independently. Far from the centre of the vortex, the flow is very slow, and the radial part ϕ(r) becomes a sum of oscillatory solutions,where k = ||k|| 2 is the wavevector norm. This describes the superposition of an inward wave of (complex) amplitude A in propagating towards the vortex, and an outward wave propagating away from it with amplitude A out . These coefficients are not independent. The A in values, one for each f and m component, are fixed by the incident part ξ I . If the incident wave is a plane wave ξ = ξ 0 e −2iπft+ik·x , then the partial amplitudes are given by A in = ξ 0 e imπ+iπ/4 / √ 2πk. In other words, a plane wave is a superposition containing all azimuthal waves, something that we have exploited...

We analyse the necessary and sufficient conditions for the occurance of superradiance. Starting with a wave equation we examine the possibility of superradiance in terms of an effective potential and boundary conditions. In particular, we show that the existence of an ergoregion is not sufficient; an appropriate boundary condition, e.g. only ingoing group velocity waves at an event horizon, is also crucial. After applying our scheme to the standard examples of superradiance, we show that analogue models of gravity without an event horizon do not necessarily exhibit superradiance. Particularly, we show that the superradiant phenomenon is absent in purely rotating inviscid fluids with vorticity. We argue that there should be a catalogue of superradiant systems that can be found by focusing on the necessary and sufficient conditions outlined below.PACS numbers: 98.80. Qc,47.35.Rs Wave scattering processes are characterized by the interaction between an incident wave and a physical obstacle, e.g., light rays scattering off raindrops to form a rainbow and x-ray scattering used in medical imaging. In standard scattering processes, incident waves lose energy due to interaction with the media they traverse. Their incoming amplitude is greater than the amplitude of the reflected waves. However, we know of the existence of some special systems where this behaviour is reversed. The amplitude of the reflected wave is larger than the amplitude of the incoming one, meaning energy is extracted from the system. The most popular examples of this phenomenon, known as superradiance [1], are the scattering of scalar waves by rotating black holes [2,3], and the scattering of electromagnetic waves by a rotating cylinder made of electrical conductive material [4,5].In this paper, we investigate the details behind the phenomenum of superradiance. In our set-up, the wave scattering process is described by a second order differential equation and an effective potential determined by the interaction between the incident wave and the scattering obstacle. We consider a very general potential and derive the necessary and sufficient condition to invoke superradiant wave scattering. Counterintuitively, such scattering only happens in systems where there is absorption, e.g. a electrically conductive rotating cylinder or a rotating black hole. Starting with the standard examples and generalising to other systems, we show that superradiance is possible when the imaginary part of the effective potential is negative. We also demonstrate that the existence of an ergoregion, i.e. a region where no physical observer can remain at rest, is not sufficient for the ocurrence of superradiance; an appropriate boundary condition is also required. We show the relevance of our result for some acoustic spacetime geometries, and point out some misconceptions appearing in the recent literature where an ergoregion was present but the boundary condition was imposed without clear reasoning [6,7]. Finally, we indicate the difference between superradiance and dynam...

We revisit here the recent proposal for overspinning a nearly extreme black hole by means of a quantum tunneling process. We show that electrically neutral massless fermions evade possible back reactions effects related to superradiance, confirming the view that it would be indeed possible to form a naked singularity due to quantum effects.

We revisit the mechanism for violating the weak cosmic-censorship conjecture (WCCC) by overspinning a nearly-extreme charged black hole. The mechanism consists of an incoming massless neutral scalar particle, with low energy and large angular momentum, tunneling into the hole. We investigate the effect of the large angular momentum of the incoming particle on the background geometry and address recent claims that such a back-reaction would invalidate the mechanism. We show that the large angular momentum of the incident particle does not constitute an obvious impediment to the success of the overspinning quantum mechanism, although the induced back-reaction turns out to be essential to restoring the validity of the WCCC in the classical regime. These results seem to endorse the view that the "cosmic censor" may be oblivious to processes involving quantum effects.Comment: 5 pages, to appear as a Rapid Communication in Phys. Rev.

Motivated by the recent attempts to violate the weak cosmic censorship conjecture for near-extreme black holes, we consider the possibility of overcharging a near-extreme Reissner-Nordström black hole by the quantum tunneling of charged particles. We consider the scattering of spin-0 and spin-1 2 particles by the black hole in a unified framework and obtain analytically, for the first time, the pertinent reflection and transmission coefficients without any small charge approximation. Based on these results, we propose some gedanken experiments that could lead to the violation of the weak cosmic censorship conjecture due to the (classically forbidden) absorption of small energy charged particles by the black hole. As for the case of scattering in Kerr spacetimes, our results demonstrate explicitly that scalar fields are subject to (electrical) superradiance phenomenon, while spin-1 2 fields are not. Superradiance impose some limitations on the gedanken experiments involving spin-0 fields, favoring, in this way, the mechanisms for creation of a naked singularity by the quantum tunneling of spin-1 2 charged fermions. We also discuss the implications that vacuum polarization effects and quantum statistics might have on these gedanken experiments. In particular, we show that they are not enough to prevent the absorption of incident small energy particles and, consequently, the formation of a naked singularity.