Rigidity of marginally trapped surfaces and the topology of black holes (Q937846)

The topology of the horizon of black holes in higher dimensions is discussed in the present paper. The Einstein equation is assumed to be valid with an energy-momentum tensor fulfilling the dominant energy condition. The notion of a marginally outer trapped surface (MOTS) are well motivated and defined. Then the notions ``outermost MOTS'' and ``weakly outermost MOTS'' is defined. Theorem 1.1. states that in this context, every outermost MOTS is of positive Yamabe type, i.e., admits a metric of positive scalar curvature. The analogous theorem 1.2. concerns weakly outermost MOTS, and is more technical in its formulation and proof. Finally, the results are compared with earlier results by Schoen and Hawking.