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Extremal Black Holes in Dynamical Chern-Simons Gravity

Rapidly rotating black hole solutions in theories beyond general relativity play a key role in experimental gravity, as they allow us to compute observables in extreme spacetimes that deviate from the predictions of general relativity. Such solutions are often difficult to find in beyond-general-relativity theories due to the inclusion of additional fields that couple to the metric non-linearly and non-minimally. In this paper, we consider rotating black hole solutions in one such theory, dynamical Chern-Simons gravity, where the Einstein-Hilbert action is modified by the introduction of a dynamical scalar field that couples to the metric through the Pontryagin density. We treat dynamical Chern-Simons gravity as an effective field theory and work in the decoupling limit, where corrections are treated as small perturbations from general relativity. We perturb about the maximally-rotating Kerr solution, the so-called extremal limit, and develop mathematical insight into the analysis techniques needed to construct solutions for generic spin. First we find closed-form, analytic expressions for the extremal scalar field, and then determine the trace of the metric perturbation, giving both in terms of Legendre decompositions. Retaining only the first three and four modes in the Legendre representation of the scalar field and the trace, respectively, suffices to ensure a fidelity of over 99% relative to full numerical solutions. The leading-order mode in the Legendre expansion of the trace of the metric perturbation contains a logarithmic divergence at the extremal Kerr horizon, which is likely to be unimportant as it occurs inside the perturbed dynamical Chern-Simons horizon. The techniques employed here should enable the construction of analytic, closed-form expressions for the scalar field and metric perturbations on a background with arbitrary rotation.