English

Generic Isolated Horizons and their Applications

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2009-10-31 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Boundary conditions defining a generic isolated horizon are introduced. They generalize the notion available in the existing literature by allowing the horizon to have distortion and angular momentum. Space-times containing a black hole, itself in equilibrium but possibly surrounded by radiation, satisfy these conditions. In spite of this generality, the conditions have rich consequences. They lead to a framework, somewhat analogous to null infinity, for extracting physical information, but now in the \textit{strong} field regions. The framework also generalizes the zeroth and first laws of black hole mechanics to more realistic situations and sheds new light on the `origin' of the first law. Finally, it provides a point of departure for black hole entropy calculations in non-perturbative quantum gravity.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.gr-qc/0006006,
  title  = {Generic Isolated Horizons and their Applications},
  author = {Abhay Ashtekar and Christopher Beetle and Olaf Dreyer and Stephen Fairhurst and Badri Krishnan and Jerzy Lewandowski and Jacek Wisniewski},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:gr-qc/0006006},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

4 pages, RevTeX. Minor typos were corrected and the fact that, in contrast to Ref [4], isolated horizons are now allowed to have distortion and rotation was clarified

R2 v1 2026-07-22T12:31:51.094Z