Black Hole Uniqueness Theorems (Q4236328)

The purpose of this book is to present the details and mathematical background necessary to understand the various uniqueness theorems for stationary black holes. In the last thirty-five years the mathematical theory of black holes has developed tremendously. This book provides an up-to-date review of one major aspect of the progress made over those past thirty-five years. It is a well-written and comprehensive account written by a contributor of many recent results in the field. Differential forms are used throughout the text for computations and the level of mathematical rigor is generally high. Although the book is reasonably self-contained in its presentation, it does assume a good understanding of the notions and methods of contemporary general relativity. Some important notions, for example asymptotically flatness, are not defined in the book, but references are provided for these omissions. Although classical approaches to some of the uniqueness theorems are discussed, the proofs that are emphasized and given in detail are based on the positive energy theorem. An effort is made to distinguish between results purely geometrical in nature and those which involve matter fields. A very extensive list of references is provided and the author is careful to help the reader understand the relationship between the ideas discussed in the book and the current literature. Some new results appear and several open problems are discussed. An outline of the contents follows. After some very brief preliminaries on differential forms, the book begins with a discussion of the general properties of spacetimes with Killing fields. A detailed discussion of the properties and basic geometric identities satisfied by stationary, static, stationary and axisymmetric, and circular spacetimes is given in Chapters 2 and 3. Complete derivations of the Kerr and the Kerr-Newman metrics are given in Chapters 4 and 5. In Chapter 6 the basic notions of stationary black holes and Killing horizons are discussed. In addition, the author discusses (without proof) the strong rigidity theorem of Hawking and the weak rigidity theorem (with proof) of Carter. The subject of Chapter 7 is the four laws of black hole physics. The zeroth and first law are derived in detail, a derivation of the second law is outlined, and the third is briefly discussed. Chapter 8 is entitled ``Integrability and divergence identities'' and contains essential background material for the uniqueness theorems. Some new results are included in this chapter. In particular, a new version of the staticity theorem is presented and a new derivation of a mass formula for a nonrotating, but not necessarily static, stationary black hole spacetime is given. In Chapters 9 and 10 the author presents the promised uniqueness theorems for nonrotating and rotating stationary black holes. In particular, proofs are presented of the uniqueness of the Schwarzschild metric, the Reissner-Nordström metric, and the magnetically charged Reissner-Nordström metrics. Recent progress on proving the uniqueness of the Papapetrou-Majumdar metric is discussed. As mentioned above, the proofs are based on the positive energy theorem and sigma model identities. The last two chapters deal with self-gravitating harmonic mappings. This work is very recent and due in part to the author. A proof is given of the uniqueness of the Kerr metric amongst stationary black hole solutions of self-gravitating harmonic mappings with arbitrary Riemannian target manifolds. In summary, the book makes a valuable contribution by providing an up-to-date account of the uniqueness theorems for stationary black holes. It should provide a very good entry point for advanced graduate students and researchers who are interested in the subject.