On the uniqueness of smooth, stationary black holes in vacuum (Q1006318)

A fundamental conjecture in general relativity asserts that the domain of outer communication of a regular, stationary, four dimensional, vacuum black hole solution is isometrically diffeomorphic to the domain of outer communication of a Kerr black hole. So far this conjecture has been resolved by combining results of Hawking, Carter and Robinson, under the additional hypothesis of non-degenerate horizons and real analyticity of the space-time. The last assumption is hard to justify as well as difficult to dispense. The authors develop a new strategy to bypass analyticity based on a tensorial characterization of the Kerr solutions. They prove, under a technical assumption (an identity relating the Ernst potential and the Killing scalar) on the bifurcate sphere of the event horizon, that the domain of outer communication of a smooth, regular, stationary Einstein vacuum spacetime of dimension 4 is locally isometric to the domain of outer communication of a Kerr spacetime. After introduction to the problem and presentation of the precise assumptions and the main theorem there are given geometric preliminaries. Then following sections contain steps of the proof.