A geometric invariant characterising initial data for the Kerr-Newman spacetime (Q1683955)

This important and mathematically rigorous paper introduces a new geometrical invariant to characterize initial data for the Kerr-Newman solution, the famous solution to the Einstein-Maxwell equations that describes a stationary, charged, rotating black hole. This construction may lead to a more thorough understanding of the many as yet unanswered questions about the structure of the Kerr-Newman solution: Is the solution unique? Is it only unique if analyticity is assumed? What about its nonlinear stability? The authors characterize Kerr-Newman in a new way. A characterization in terms of Killing spinors leads to the construction of the new geometrical invariant that characterizes the initial data for the spacetime, an invariant that simply vanishes if and only if the initial data set corresponds to exact Kerr-Newman initial data. The paper begins with a review of the use of Killing spinors in electrovacuum spacetimes and leads to a characterization of Kerr-Newman in terms of a Killing spinor that illustrate a hidden symmetry of the spacetime, a symmetry that is not expressible in terms of isometries of the spacetime. The authors then show how the existence of such a spinor can be expressed in terms of initial data. They use a space-spinor formalism to derive four independent conditions on an initial Cauchy hypersurface, \(S\), that insures the existence of a Killing spinor on the development of the initial data. Using techniques analogous to the vacuum case (see, [\textit{T. Bäckdahl} and the second author, ibid. 11, No. 7, 1225--1271 (2010; Zbl 1208.83027)]) they study solutions to an approximate Killing spinor equation obtained, and they ultimately construct a geometric invariant that characterizes Kerr-Newman. The invariant is ``expressed in terms of suitable integrals over the hypersurface \(S\) whose vanishing characterizes in a necessary and sufficient manner initial data for the Kerr-Newman spacetime.''