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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Hsu, Yi-Hsiung, Barker, Will, Hobson, Michael, Lasenby, Anthony
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.13255
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Table of Contents:
  • We investigate the conditions under which a hypersurface becomes null through the use of coordinate transformations. We demonstrate that, in static spacetimes, the correct criterion for a surface to be null is $g_{tt} = 0$, rather than $g^{rr} = 0$, in agreement with the results of Vollick. We further show that, if a Kruskal-like coordinate exists, the proxy condition $g^{rr} = 0$ is equivalent to $g_{tt} = 0$ if $\partial_r g_{tt} \neq 0$ and both $g^{rr}$ and $g_{tt}$ vanish at the same rate near the horizon. Our method extends naturally to axisymmetric stationary spacetimes, for which we demonstrate that the condition $\det\big(h_{ab}\big) = 0$ for the induced metric on a null hypersurface is recovered. By contrast with the induced metric approach, our method provides a physical perspective that connects the general null condition with its underlying relationship to photon geodesics.