Black holes and black regions, horizons and barriers in Lorentzian manifolds

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Giannotti, Cristina, Spiro, Andrea
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Giannotti, Cristina
Spiro, Andrea
author_facet Giannotti, Cristina
Spiro, Andrea
contents We prove that if S is a time-oriented null hypersurface of a Lorentzian n-manifold (M, g), the causal world-lines, which intersect transversally S and are time-oriented in a compatible way, cross the hypersurface all in the same direction, the other being forbidden. Even if it is known that a smooth event horizon (in the sense of Penrose, Hawking and Ellis) is a null hypersurface and has the above semi-permeability property, at the best of our knowledge, in the literature it was not stated so far that the latter is a mere consequence of the former. Our result leads to the concepts of barriers (= null hypersurfaces separating the space-time into disjoint regions) and black regions (= time-oriented regions bounded by barriers). These objects naturally include (smooth) event horizons and (smoothly bounded) black holes. Since barriers are defined by two simple properties -- the merely local property of "nullity" combined with the global property of "separating the space-time" -- we expect they may be used to simplify computations for locating static and/or dynamic horizons in numerical computations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_06133
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Black holes and black regions, horizons and barriers in Lorentzian manifolds
Giannotti, Cristina
Spiro, Andrea
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Mathematical Physics
Differential Geometry
83C57, 53C50, 83C05
We prove that if S is a time-oriented null hypersurface of a Lorentzian n-manifold (M, g), the causal world-lines, which intersect transversally S and are time-oriented in a compatible way, cross the hypersurface all in the same direction, the other being forbidden. Even if it is known that a smooth event horizon (in the sense of Penrose, Hawking and Ellis) is a null hypersurface and has the above semi-permeability property, at the best of our knowledge, in the literature it was not stated so far that the latter is a mere consequence of the former. Our result leads to the concepts of barriers (= null hypersurfaces separating the space-time into disjoint regions) and black regions (= time-oriented regions bounded by barriers). These objects naturally include (smooth) event horizons and (smoothly bounded) black holes. Since barriers are defined by two simple properties -- the merely local property of "nullity" combined with the global property of "separating the space-time" -- we expect they may be used to simplify computations for locating static and/or dynamic horizons in numerical computations.
title Black holes and black regions, horizons and barriers in Lorentzian manifolds
topic General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Mathematical Physics
Differential Geometry
83C57, 53C50, 83C05
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.06133