arXiv subjects

Ivan Booth

Publications and source records attributed to Ivan Booth.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Black hole evolutions: Lessons from bifurcation theory

We explore the role of the stability operator in regulating the evolution of marginally outer trapped surfaces (MOTSs). In 2005, Andersson, Mars and Simon showed that if the stability operator is invertible, then the time evolution of a MOTS is unique. Here we focus on moments at which that stability operator is not invertible. Understanding MOTSs as analogous to fixed points, and the stability operator as a linearization of the system of the MOTS-defining equations, bifurcation theory can be used to classify possible non-unique evolutions. MOTS pair creation/annihilation is an example of a saddle-node bifurcation but other possibilities can occur, including pitchfork and transcritical bifurcations. Analytical and numerical tools are used to identify examples of the various bifurcations in a variety of spacetimes. To help analyze those results, we define a generalized MOTS stability operator and discuss the (partial) barrier properties of unstable MOTSs. Spherically symmetric examples are given in Reissner-Nordstr\"om-de Sitter spacetime and axisymmetric examples are studied in Reissner-Nordstr\"om and Weyl-distorted Schwarzschild. This application of bifurcation theory is very general and so applies to any theory of gravity containing MOTSs (or some generalization thereof). Possible bifurcations of those structures are constrained in any such theory in the same way.

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arXiv2025

Distorted black ring with rotation on the two-sphere

We construct a stationary black ring spacetime with rotation only along the $S^2$ direction that is free of conical singularities. We use a solution-generating technique to add external gravitational fields and show these can be used to remove conical singularities from an asymptotically flat black ring with a rotating $S^2$.

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arXiv2024

Distorted static black holes with a bubble

We construct a family of local static, vacuum five-dimensional solutions with two commuting spatial isometries describing a black hole with a $S^3$ horizon and a 2-cycle `bubble' in the domain of outer communications. The solutions are obtained by adding distortions to an asymptotically flat seed solution. We show that the conical singularities in the undistorted geometry can be removed by an appropriate choice of the distortion.

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arXiv2023

Marginally Outer Trapped Tori in Black Hole Spacetimes

During a binary black hole merger, multiple intermediary marginally outer trapped tubes connect the initial pair of apparent horizons with the final (single) apparent horizon. The marginally outer trapped surfaces (MOTSs) that foliate these tubes can have complicated geometries as well as non-spherical topologies. In particular, toroidal MOTSs form inside both of the original black holes during the early stages of a head-on merger that starts from time-symmetric initial data [1]. We show that toroidal MOTSs also form in the maximal analytic extension of the Schwarzschild spacetime as Kruskal time advances from the $T=0$ moment of time symmetry. As for the merger simulations, they cross the Einstein-Rosen bridge and are tightly sandwiched between the apparent horizons in the two asymptotic regions at early times. This strongly suggests that their formation is a consequence of the initial conditions rather than merger physics. Finally, we consider MOTSs of spherical topology in the Kruskal-Szekeres slicing and study their properties. All of these are contained within the apparent horizon but some do not enclose the wormhole.

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arXiv2023

Symmetry and instability of marginally outer trapped surfaces

We consider an initial data set having a continuous symmetry and a marginally outer trapped surface (MOTS) that is not preserved by this symmetry. We show that such a MOTS is unstable except in an exceptional case. In non-rotating cases we provide a Courant-type lower bound on the number of unstable eigenvalues. These results are then used to prove the instability of a large class of exotic MOTSs that were recently observed in the Schwarzschild spacetime. We also discuss the implications for the apparent horizon in data sets with translational symmetry.

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arXiv2023

What is a degree of freedom? Configuration spaces and their topology

Understanding degrees of freedom in classical mechanics is fundamental to characterizing physical systems. Counting them is usually easy, especially if we can assign them a clear meaning. However, the precise definition of a degree of freedom is not usually presented in first-year physics courses since it requires mathematical knowledge only learned in more advanced courses. In this paper, we use a pedagogical approach motivated by simple but non-trivial mechanical examples to define degrees of freedom and configuration spaces. We highlight the role that topology plays in understanding these ideas.

physics.class-ph↗

arXiv2022

Exotic marginally outer trapped surfaces in rotating spacetimes of any dimension

The recently developed MOTSodesic method for locating marginally outer trapped surfaces was effectively restricted to non-rotating spacetimes. In this paper we extend the method to (multi-)axisymmetric time slices of (multi-)axisymmetric spacetimes of any dimension. We then apply this method to study marginally outer trapped surfaces (MOTSs) in the BTZ, Kerr and Myers-Perry black holes. While there are many similarities between the MOTSs observed in these spacetimes and those seen in Schwarzschild and Reissner-Nordstr\"om, details of the more complicated geometries also introduce some new, previously unseen, behaviours.

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arXiv2021

The Interior MOTSs of Spherically Symmetric Black Holes

There are notable similarities between the marginally outer trapped surfaces (MOTSs) present in the interior of a binary black hole merger and those present in the interior of the Schwarzschild black hole. Here we study the existence and properties of MOTSs with self-intersections in the interior of more general static and spherically symmetric black holes and coordinate systems. Our analysis is carried out in a parametrized family of Painlev{\'e}-Gullstrand-like coordinates that we introduce. First, for the Schwarzschild spacetime, we study the existence of these surfaces for various slicings of the spacetime finding them to be generic within the family of coordinate systems we investigate. Then, we study how an inner horizon affects the existence and properties of these surfaces by exploring examples: the Reissner-Nordstr\"om black hole and the four-dimensional Gauss-Bonnet black hole. We find that an inner horizon results in a finite number of self-intersecting MOTSs, but their properties depend sensitively on the interior structure of the black hole. By analyzing the spectrum of the stability operator, we show that our results for two-horizon black holes provide exact-solution examples of recently observed properties of unstable MOTSs present in the interior of a binary black hole merger, such as the sequence of bifurcations/annihilations that lead to the disappearance of apparent horizons.

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arXiv2021

Ultimate fate of apparent horizons during a binary black hole merger I: Locating and understanding axisymmetric marginally outer trapped surfaces

In classical numerical relativity, marginally outer trapped surfaces (MOTSs) are the main tool to locate and characterize black holes. For five decades it has been known that during a binary merger, a new outer horizon forms around the initial apparent horizons of the individual holes once they are sufficiently close together. However the ultimate fate of those initial horizons has remained a subject of speculation. Recent axisymmetric studies have shed new light on this process and this pair of papers essentially completes that line of research: we resolve the key features of the post-swallowing axisymmetric evolution of the initial horizons. This first paper introduces a new shooting-method for finding axisymmetric MOTSs along with a reinterpretation of the stability operator as the analogue of the Jacobi equation for families of MOTSs. Here, these tools are used to study exact solutions and initial data. In the sequel paper they are applied to black hole mergers.

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arXiv2021

Ultimate fate of apparent horizons during a binary black hole merger II: Horizons weaving back and forth in time

In this second part of a two-part paper, we discuss numerical simulations of a head-on merger of two non-spinning black holes. We resolve the fate of the original two apparent horizons by showing that after intersecting, their world tubes "turn around" and continue backwards in time. Using the method presented in the first paper to locate these surfaces, we resolve several such world tubes evolving and connecting through various bifurcations and annihilations. This also draws a consistent picture of the full merger in terms of apparent horizons, or more generally, marginally outer trapped surfaces (MOTSs). The MOTS stability operator provides a natural mechanism to identify MOTSs which should be thought of as black hole boundaries. These are the two initial ones and the final remnant. All other MOTSs lie in the interior and are neither stable nor inner trapped.

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arXiv2021

What Happens to Apparent Horizons in a Binary Black Hole Merger?

We resolve the fate of the two original apparent horizons during the head-on merger of two non-spinning black holes. We show that following the appearance of the outer common horizon and subsequent inter-penetration of the original horizons, they continue to exist for a finite period of time before they are individually annihilated by unstable MOTSs. The inner common horizon vanishes in a similar, though independent, way. This completes the understanding of the analogue of the event horizon's "pair of pants" diagram for the apparent horizon. Our result is facilitated by a new method for locating marginally outer trapped surfaces (MOTSs) based on a generalized shooting method. We also discuss the role played by the MOTS stability operator in discerning which among a multitude of MOTSs should be considered as black hole boundaries.

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arXiv2020

MOTS in Schwarzschild: multiple self-intersections and extreme mass ratio mergers

We study the open and closed axisymmetric marginally outer trapped surfaces contained in leaves of constant Painlev\'e-Gullstrand time for Schwarzschild spacetimes. We identify a family of closed MOTS in the black hole interior characterized by an arbitrary number of self-intersections. This suggests that the self-intersecting behaviour reported in [Phys.Rev.D 100, 084044 (2019)] may be a far more generic phenomenon than expected. We also consider open surfaces, finding that their behaviour is highly constrained but includes surfaces with multiple self-intersections inside the horizon. We argue that the behaviour of open MOTS identifies and constrains the possible local behaviour of MOTS during extreme mass ratio mergers.

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arXiv2019

Horizons as boundary conditions in spherical symmetry

We initiate the development of a horizon-based initial (or rather final) value formalism to describe the geometry and physics of the near-horizon spacetime: data specified on the horizon and a future ingoing null boundary determine the near-horizon geometry. In this initial paper we restrict our attention to spherically symmetric spacetimes made dynamic by matter fields. We illustrate the formalism by considering a black hole interacting with a) inward-falling, null matter (with no outward flux) and b) a massless scalar field. The inward-falling case can be exactly solved from horizon data. For the more involved case of the scalar field we analytically investigate the near slowly evolving horizon regime and propose a numerical integration for the general case.

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arXiv2018

Evading the Trans-Planckian problem with Vaidya spacetimes

Hawking radiation, when treated in the ray optics limit, exhibits the unfortunate trans-Planckian problem --- a Hawking photon near spatial infinity, if back-tracked to the immediate vicinity of the horizon is hugely blue-shifted and found to have had trans-Planckian energy. (And if back-tracked all the way to the horizon, the photon is formally infinitely blue-shifted, and formally acquires infinite energy.) Unruh has forcefully argued that this implies that the Hawking flux represents a vacuum instability in the presence of a horizon, and that the Hawking photons are actually emitted from some region exterior to the horizon. We seek to make this idea more precise and somewhat explicit by building a purely kinematical model for Hawking evaporation based on two Vaidya spacetimes (outer and inner) joined across a thin time-like boundary layer. The kinematics of this model is already quite rich, and we shall defer consideration of the dynamics for subsequent work. In particular we shall present an explicit calculation of the the 4-acceleration of the shell (including the effects of gravity, motion, and the outgoing null flux) and relate this 4-acceleration to the Unruh temperature.

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arXiv2017

Unstable marginally outer trapped surfaces in static spherically symmetric spacetimes

We examine potential deformations of inner black hole and cosmological horizons in Reissner-Nordstr\"om de-Sitter spacetimes. While the rigidity of the outer black hole horizon is guaranteed by theorem, that theorem applies to neither the inner black hole nor past cosmological horizon. Further for pure deSitter spacetime it is clear that the cosmological horizon can be deformed (by translation). For specific parameter choices, it is shown that both inner black hole and cosmological horizons can be infinitesimally deformed. However these do not extend to finite deformations. The corresponding results for general spherically symmetric spacetimes are considered.

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arXiv2017

Deformation of horizons during a merger

We model an extreme mass ratio merger (EMR) as a point particle radially plunging into a large Schwarzschild black hole. We assume that the mass of the point particle, $\mu$, is much smaller than the black hole mass M. Under this assumption we can employ the Zerilli formalism modified to include a source term which arises from the energy-momentum tensor of the small object. We solve the Zerilli equation by numerically evolving initial data. Then, we ray trace the null geodesics of the event horizon from after the merger backward in time to extract the geometry of the perturbed event horizon. Further, we take advantage of the axisymmetry of the setup to locate the apparent horizon and study its geometry.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2016

Collapse and bounce of null fluids

Exact solutions describing the spherical collapse of null fluids can contain regions which violate the energy conditions. Physically the violations occur when the infalling matter continues to move inwards even when non-gravitational repulsive forces become stronger than gravity. In 1991 Ori proposed a resolution for these violations: spacetime surgery should be used to replace the energy condition violating region with an outgoing solution. The matter bounces. We revisit and implement this proposal for the more general Husain null fluids including a careful study of potential discontinuities and associated matter shells between the regions. Along the way we highlight an error in the standard classification of energy condition violations for Type II stress-energy tensors.

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arXiv2015

Geodesic motion around a distorted static black hole

In this paper we study geodesic motion around a distorted Schwarzschild black hole. We consider both timelike and null geodesics which are confined to the black hole's equatorial plane. Such geodesics generically exist if the distortion field has only even interior multipole moments and so the field is symmetric with respect to the equatorial plane. We specialize to the case of distortions defined by a quadrupole Weyl moment. An analysis of the effective potential for equatorial timelike geodesics shows that finite stable orbits outside the black hole are possible only for $q\in(q_{\text{min}}, q_{\text{max}}]$, where $q_{\text{min}}\approx-0.0210$ and $q_{\text{max}}\approx2.7086\times10^{-4}$, while for null equatorial geodesics a finite stable orbit outside the black hole is possible only for $q\in[q_{\text{min}},0)$. Moreover, the innermost stable circular orbits (ISCOs) are closer to the distorted black hole horizon than those of an undistorted Schwarzschild black hole for $q\in(q_{\text{min}},0)$ and a null ISCO exists for $q=q_{\text{min}}$. These results shows that an external distortion of a negative and sufficiently small quadrupole moment tends to stabilize motion of massive particles and light.

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