Energy and angular momentum flow into a black hole

The area of the event horizon round a rotating black hole will increase in the presence of a non-axisymmetric or time dependent perturbation. If the perturbation is a matter field, the area increase is related to the fluxes of energy and of angular momentum into the black hole in such a way as to maintain the formula for the area in the Kerr solution. For purely gravitational perturbations one cannot define angular momentum locally but one can use the area increase and the expression for area in terms of mass and angular momentum to calculate the slowing down of a black hole caused by a non-axisymmetric distribution of matter at a distance. It seems that the coupling between the rotation of a black hole and the orbit of a particle going round it can be significant if the angular momentum of the black hole is close to its maximum possible value and if the angular velocity of the particle is nearly equal to that of the black hole.Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, supported in part by the National Science Foundation.