Related papers: Developments in General Relativity: Black Hole Sin…
There is persistent and endemic confusion between the true (future) horizon and the illusory (past) horizon of a black hole. The illusory horizon is the redshifting surface of matter that fell into the black hole long ago. A person who…
The subject of this work is the formation of black holes in pure general relativity, by the focusing of incoming gravitational waves. The theorems established in this monograph constitute the first foray into the long time dynamics of…
An alternative approach towards quantum theory is described, and tentative attempts to connect his approach to special and general relativity are discussed. Important concepts are gauge groups and information/entropy connected to some…
Following a short account of the history of the idea of black holes, we present a review of the current status of the search for observational evidence of their existence aimed at an audience of relativists rather than astronomers or…
Starting from the Oppenheimer-Snyder model, we know how in classical general relativity the gravitational collapse of matter form a black hole with a central spacetime singularity. It is widely believed that the singularity must be removed…
We discuss and compare definitions of a black hole based on the existence of event and apparent horizons. In this connection we present a non-singular model of a black hole with a closed apparent horizon and discuss its properties. We…
While until recently they were often considered as exotic objects of dubious existence, in the last decades there have been overwhelming observational evidences for the presence of stellar mass black holes in binary systems, supermassive…
We review some properties of black hole structures appearing in gravity with a massless scalar field, with both minimal and nonminimal coupling. The main properties of the resulting cold black holes are described. The study of black holes…
A personal perspective on the black hole evaporation process is presented using as guidelines inputs from: (i) loop quantum gravity, (ii) simplified models where concrete results have been obtained, and, (iii) semi-classical quantum general…
We construct here a special class of perfect fluid collapse models which generalizes the homogeneous dust collapse solution in order to include non-zero pressures and inhomogeneities into evolution. It is shown that a black hole is…
The black hole information paradox forces us into a strange situation: we must find a way to break the semiclassical approximation in a domain where no quantum gravity effects would normally be expected. Traditional quantizations of gravity…
To apply the laws of General Relativity to quantum black holes, one first needs to remove the horizon singularity by means of Kruskal-Szekeres coordinates. This however doubles spacetime, which thereby is equipped with an exact binary…
Black holes are extreme manifestations of general relativity, so one might hope that exotic quantum effects would be amplified in their vicinities, perhaps providing clues to quantum gravity. The commonly accepted treatment of quantum…
This work is originally a Cambridge Part III essay. Throughout the paper, some aspects of General Relativity in higher dimensions are reviewed. The work presented draws a path within the wide landscape of higher dimensional black holes…
The process of black hole evaporation resulting from the Hawking effect has generated an intense controversy regarding its potential conflict with quantum mechanics' unitary evolution. In a recent couple of works of a collaboration…
Some of the theoretical challenges posed by the general relativistic description of binary systems of compact objects (neutron stars or black holes) are reviewed. We recall the various ways one can use the theory of the motion, and of the…
We review the status of the weak cosmic censorship conjecture, which asserts, in essence, that all singularities of gravitational collapse are hidden within black holes. Although little progress has been made toward a general proof (or…
A series of tantalizing results led to the black hole uniqueness conjecture: isolated, realistic black holes should settle down to states characterized by their spin, mass and charge. I argue that generically real black holes will also…
General Relativity has had tremendous successes on both theoretical and experimental fronts for over a century by now. However, the theory contents are far from being exhausted. Only very recently, with gravitational wave detection from…
This article is based on a pair of lectures given at the 2005 SLAC Summer Institute. Our goal is to motivate why most physicists and astrophysicists accept the hypothesis that the most massive, compact objects seen in many astrophysical…