Related papers: Will black holes eventually engulf the universe?
In these notes we describe recent progress in understanding finite size corrections to the black hole entropy. Much of the earlier work concerning quantum black holes has been in the limit of large charges when the area of the even horizon…
The black hole mass function of supermassive black holes describes the evolution of the distribution of black hole mass. It is one of the primary empirical tools available for mapping the growth of supermassive black holes and for…
One of the remarkable features of black holes is that they possess a thermodynamic description, even though they do not appear to be statistical systems. We use self-gravitating magnetic monopole solutions as tools for understanding the…
It is suggested that the recently observed size evolution of very massive compact galaxies in the early universe can be explained, if dark matter is in Bose Einstein condensate. In this model the size of the dark matter halos and galaxies…
Astrophysical black holes are likely to be surrounded by various forms of matter in the form of disks or halos. While a number of studies have examined the impact of an environment on the lensing of light or gravitational waves from…
We investigate the evolution of black holes present during the inflationary epoch, assuming they are dynamically coupled to the cosmological background through a generalized McVittie geometry, such that their gravitational mass scales with…
What is going on (as of August 2008) at the interface between theoretical general relativity, string-inspired models, and observational astrophysics? Quite a lot. In this mini-survey I will make a personal choice and focus on four specific…
The Standard Model of particle physics predicts the speed of light to be a universal speed of propagation of massless carriers. However, other possibilities exist -- including Lorentz-violating theories -- where different fundamental fields…
It is shown that the energy in the centre of mass frame of colliding particles in free fall at any point of the ergosphere of the rotating black hole can grow without limit for fixed energy values on infinity. The effect takes place for…
Black holes are probably among the most fascinating objects populating our universe. Their characteristic features found within general relativity, encompassing spacetime singularities, event horizons, and black hole thermodynamics, provide…
Black holes are among the most intriguing objects in modern physics. Their influence ranges from powering quasars and other active galactic nuclei, to providing key insights into quantum gravity. We review the observational evidence for…
Understanding the fate of semi-classical black hole solutions at very late times is one of the most important open questions in quantum gravity. In this paper, we provide a path integral definition of the volume of the black hole interior…
A brief, and certainly not exhaustive, survey is provided of some recent results and conjectures in four and higher spacetime dimensions, such as the Hoop Conjecture, relating the geometry of event horizons to dynamical quantities such as…
Using a cosmological black hole model proposed recently, we have calculated the quasi-local mass of a collapsing structure within a cosmological setting due to different definitions put forward in the last decades to see how similar or…
It has been claimed that extreme black holes exhibit a phenomenon of flux expulsion for abelian Higgs vortices, irrespective of the relative width of the vortex to the black hole. Recent work by two of the authors showed a subtlety in the…
Charged extremal black holes cannot fully evaporate through the Hawking effect and are thus long lived. Over their lifetimes, these black holes take part in a variety of astrophysical processes, including many that lead to their eventual…
A combination of ground-based and spacecraft observations has uncovered two black holes of 10 billion solar masses in the nearby Universe. The finding sheds light on how these cosmic monsters co-evolve with galaxies.
It has recently been suggested that black holes may be described as condensates of weakly interacting gravitons at a critical point, exhibiting strong quantum effects. In this paper, we study a model system of attractive bosons in one…
It is shown that the energy in the centre of mass frame of two colliding particles in free fall at any point of the ergosphere of the rotating black hole can grow without limit for fixed energy values of particles on infinity. The effect…
We study a minimal extension of a recently proposed modification of general relativity that draws on concepts from topological field theory to resolve aspects of the cosmological constant problem. In the original model, the field content of…