Topologically induced black hole charge and its astrophysical manifestations

Abstract

Quantum corrected effective action for gravity contains massive spin-2 ghost degrees of freedom and admits a topological term which couples longitudinal vector degrees of freedom of the massive spin-2 to Maxwell's electromagnetism. We argue that in the presence of otherwise unobservable gravimagnetic poles this topological term induces an electric charge on a black hole which can be probed through the associated electric and magnetic fields. In particular, we discuss the electromagnetic follow up from the LIGO-sensitive charged black hole binary coalescence due to the synchrotron radiation from the surrounding plasma and the shadow of super-massive charged black holes.