A rotating black hole is a black hole that possesses spin angular momentum.
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There are four known, exact, black hole solutions to Einstein's equations, which describe gravity in General Relativity. Two of these (the Kerr and Kerr-Newman black holes) rotate. It is generally believed that every black hole decays rapidly to a stable black hole; and, by the no-hair theorem, that (modulo quantum fluctuations) stable black holes can be completely described at any moment in time by these eleven numbers:
These numbers represent the conserved attributes of an object which can be determined from a distance by examining its electromagnetic and gravitational fields. All other variations in the black hole will either escape to infinity or be swallowed up by the black hole. This is because anything happening inside the black hole horizon cannot affect events outside it.
In terms of these properties, the four types of stable black holes can be defined as follows:
| Nonrotating (J = 0) | Rotating (J > 0) | |
| Uncharged (Q = 0) | Schwarzschild | Kerr |
| Charged (Q ≠ 0) | Reissner-Nordström | Kerr-Newman |
Rotating black holes are formed in the gravitational collapse of a massive spinning star or from the collapse of a collection of stars or gas with a total non-zero angular momentum. As most stars rotate it is expected that most black holes in nature are rotating black holes. In late 2006, astronomers reported estimates of the spin rates of black holes in the Astrophysical Journal. A black hole in the Milky Way, GRS 1915+105, may rotate 1,150 times per second,[1] approaching the theoretical upper limit.
The formation of a rotating black hole by a collapsar is thought to be observed as the emission of gamma ray bursts.
A rotating black hole can produce large amounts of energy at the expense of its rotational energy. This happens through the Penrose process in the black hole's ergosphere, an area just outside its event horizon. In that case a rotating black hole gradually reduces to a Schwarzschild black hole, the minimum configuration from which no further energy can be extracted, although the Kerr black hole's rotation velocity will never quite reach zero.
A rotating black hole is a solution of Einstein's field equation. There are two known exact solutions, the Kerr metric and the Kerr-Newman metric, which are believed to be representative of all rotating black hole solutions, in the exterior region.
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