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Unanswered Questions

1,161 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
7 votes
0 answers
291 views

Relation between maximally mixed state and thermal state

Hawking calculated the density matrix of the outgoing radiation to be a thermal state. I have heard people say this is a maximally mixed state. Is this because given a fixed average energy in the ...
7 votes
0 answers
147 views

Resource Recommendation for black hole metrics in General Relativity

In classical textbooks for GR, Schwarzschild and Kerr spacetimes are adequately described. In which books or articles, it is mostly believed that Reissner–Nordstrom, Kerr–Newman, Schwarzschild–de ...
7 votes
0 answers
2k views

A Universal Upper Limit on Mass Within a Radius $R$?

Since the universe has a positive cosmological constant, there is an upper limit on the mass of the black holes as evident from the so-called Schwarzschild-de Sitter metric: $ds^2 = -f(r)dt^2 + \...
7 votes
0 answers
308 views

Is the $\alpha'$ expansion in string theory an asymptotic expansion?

The low-energy bosonic effective actions of string theory lead to Einstein-Hilbert gravity, along with scalars and $p$-form Maxwell fields. For example, the action for type IIA string theory is $S = \...
7 votes
0 answers
239 views

Is it possible to have fermions in Schwarzschild spacetime?

To my understanding Geroch proved that on 4-dimensional non-compact manifold a necessary and sufficient condition for a manifold to have a notion of spinors is to be parallelizabe .1 (General ...
7 votes
0 answers
260 views

BTZ Black Hole Central Charge and Conformal Weight

I have been trying to reproduce a calculation (equation 4.12) in this paper http://arxiv.org/pdf/1107.2678v1.pdf by Carlip reviewing the derivation of the effective central charge of the BTZ Black ...
7 votes
0 answers
1k views

Energy-Momentum Tensor of a Gravitational Wave

In radiation gauge ($\gamma=0$), the Einstein field equation in vacuum for a perturbation $\gamma_{\mu\nu}:=g_{\mu\nu}-\eta_{\mu\nu}$ is given by $$ \boxed{ \partial^\alpha\partial_\alpha \gamma_{\mu\...
7 votes
0 answers
715 views

The surface area to volume ratio of a sphere and the Bekenstein bound

I am trying to relate the surface-area-to-volume-ratio of a sphere to the Bekenstein bound. Since the surface-area-to-volume-ratio decreases with increasing volume, one would surmise that, per unit of ...
7 votes
0 answers
233 views

Do semiclassical GR and charge quantisation imply magnetic monopoles?

Assuming charge quantisation and semiclassical gravity, would the absence of magnetically charged black holes lead to a violation of locality, or some other inconsistency? If so, how? (I am not ...
6 votes
1 answer
117 views

How come the magnetic field disappears when a neutron star becomes a black hole, while the rotation remains?

The only question I found is this one, but this considers as non-rotating neutron star collapsing: Our final and most comprehensive test is represented by the collapse to a BH of a magnetized ...
6 votes
0 answers
262 views

Why are there multiple universes in the Reissner-Nordström solution?

I am trying to make sense of the Penrose diagram of a non extremal Reissner-Nordström spacetime, that is, the solution with two horizons. The coordinates are $$ v'=\text{exp}\left(\frac{r_+-r_-}{2r_+^...
6 votes
0 answers
230 views

Saddle point contributions to the gravitational path integral

In his lectures on black holes and quantum information, Tom Hartman states that the gravitational path integral can be approximated as $$ Z(\beta) \approx \sum_{g_\text{cl}} e^{-I_E[g_\text{cl}, \phi]}...
6 votes
0 answers
75 views

Improving physics simulation of black hole accretion disk?

I have recently been working on software which uses ray tracing/marching to render a black hole in the Schwarzchild metric. I've implemented most everything that I originally set out to do, and I am ...
6 votes
0 answers
151 views

How does definition of event horizon imply that they are null?

I am familiar with the definition of a (future) event horizon as the boundary of the closure of the causal past of the future null infinity. I am aware that event horizons are null hypersurfaces -- ...
6 votes
0 answers
122 views

Growth of apparent horizons and null convergence condition

An apparent horion ( S. W. Hawking & G. F. R. Ellis (1975). The large scale structure of space-time.) in General Relativity is a surface where all null vectors are pointing "inwards", i....

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