A horizon separates regions according to a specified causal, dynamical or geometrical criterion. The criterion must be stated: an event horizon, an apparent horizon, a Killing horizon and a Cauchy horizon answer different questions. Some horizons describe a black hole, others an observer's acceleration or the universe's expansion. A vanishing coordinate metric component alone does not establish any of these definitions.
In an asymptotically flat spacetime, choose the relevant future null infinity , the endpoint of escaping outgoing light rays. The black-hole region and its future event horizon are
Here is the causal past. Events in cannot send a causal signal to the chosen infinity. This is a global definition: identifying the horizon requires the full future development, so a local measurement need not reveal whether an event lies on it. Smooth portions of an event horizon are null hypersurfaces generated by null geodesics. Generators may join at past caustics or crease sets, so the horizon need not be smooth everywhere. A past event horizon is defined by the time-reversed escape criterion; in the maximally extended Schwarzschild solution it bounds a white-hole region.
An observer-based definition replaces infinity by a future-inextendible worldline . Its future observer event horizon is the boundary of events that can signal to , conventionally . A past observer horizon similarly bounds events reachable from its past worldline. Such horizons depend on the observer and need not imply a black hole.
A Killing horizon is a null hypersurface to which a nonzero Killing vector field is normal. On it, is tangent to its null generators and satisfies . The surface gravity measures the failure of this Killing parameter to be an affine parameter; rescaling rescales . A degenerate Killing horizon has . Stationary black-hole horizons often are Killing horizons, whereas a general evolving event horizon need not have any Killing symmetry. The condition alone is insufficient: the null vector must also be normal to a null hypersurface.
The Schwarzschild spacetime illustrates several of these notions. In units , let . Its metric is , and is the future event horizon of the black-hole region in the appropriate extension. The apparent coordinate singularity disappears in Ingoing Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates, , :
At this metric is regular and the normal is null. Future outgoing radial rays satisfy ; inside the horizon their areal radius decreases even on the outgoing family. The stationary Killing vector field generates the horizon with when normalized at infinity. The Kretschmann scalar is , finite at the horizon and divergent at . Thus the event horizon is not the curvature singularity. The photon sphere at , which supports circular null orbits, is also not the horizon.
Quasi-local horizon notions use null expansions. For a closed spacelike two-surface, choose future outgoing and ingoing null normals , with in signature . Each expansion is the logarithmic rate of its positive area element along the corresponding null normal. A future trapped surface has and : both future light fronts initially shrink. A marginally outer trapped surface has ; for the future black-hole type also require . On a chosen spacelike slice, the outer boundary of the future trapped region is an apparent horizon, ordinarily an outermost marginally outer trapped surface when regularity permits this characterization. It depends on the slice, and a slicing need not display an apparent horizon even when the global spacetime contains an event horizon.
For the Schwarzschild metric in ingoing coordinates choose and . The spherical null expansion in ingoing coordinates gives
The round spheres inside are future trapped, while is marginal. On standard horizon-penetrating slices its sections give the apparent horizon, coinciding with the stationary event and Killing horizon. This coincidence in a symmetric stationary example does not identify the notions in a general spacetime.
A trapping horizon is a hypersurface foliated by marginal surfaces. Its future outer type obeys , and . Unlike an event horizon, this can be diagnosed from local expansion data and their variation. The null energy condition explains its causal character. At a marginal surface, the Null Raychaudhuri equation, with the present curvature sign and vanishing null twist, gives
in units . A possible nonaffinity term vanishes here because it is proportional to the zero expansion. Write a horizon evolution vector as . Preserving gives . Hence : the future outer horizon is spacelike or null. Its area expansion is . These conclusions use the outer condition and the energy condition, not merely marginality.
For the global event horizon, the future-complete horizon focusing proof of the area theorem uses the same Null Raychaudhuri equation. Under the null energy condition, a negative generator expansion forces a future caustic in finite affine parameter. Future completeness and the usual regularity or predictability assumptions exclude such a caustic on the future event-horizon boundary. Its generator expansion is therefore nonnegative and its classical area cannot decrease. These assumptions matter: this is not an unconditional result for every null surface or every matter model.
Rotating and charged solutions provide further distinctions. A nonextremal Kerr black hole has , with . Its outer Killing horizon is generated by , where , rather than by time translation alone. The ergosphere begins at the stationary-limit surface , whose radius is . Away from the axis this lies outside the event horizon: it forbids static observers but does not forbid escape to infinity. In Reissner-Nordstrom spacetime, the nonextremal radii are . The outer surface is an event horizon, whereas the inner surface is a Cauchy horizon in the exact analytic extension.
A Cauchy horizon concerns predictability from initial data. The future domain of dependence of a partial Cauchy surface consists of events for which every past-inextendible causal curve intersects . Its future Cauchy horizon is
Beyond it, causal influences can arrive without meeting the specified initial surface; data on that surface no longer determine the solution there. This is distinct from the inability to send signals to infinity. The inner horizon of the exact charged black hole supplies an example, and the definition necessarily specifies which initial surface is being used.
Flat spacetime itself has acceleration horizons. In the right Rindler wedge, set and , with . The Minkowski spacetime metric becomes . The null boundaries and are Rindler horizons of the boost Killing flow. A uniformly accelerated observer cannot receive signals from one side of its future horizon, even though the curvature vanishes and inertial observers encounter no such boundary. These are observer and Killing horizons, not a black-hole event horizon defined using the full Minkowski null infinity.
In a spatially flat Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker metric with noncompact spatial sections, radial light rays have . The particle horizon measures how far signals could have travelled since the initial cosmic time; the cosmological event horizon measures how far signals emitted now could ever travel toward a comoving observer. Their comoving and proper radii are
The respective horizon is present only if its integral is finite. The event-horizon integral uses the actual future endpoint, often , so it is global and observer-dependent. For on , a finite particle horizon exists for , while a finite event horizon exists for . Neither integral is finite for . In the expanding flat patch of de Sitter spacetime, and the proper event-horizon radius is . The static form identifies it as a cosmological Killing horizon; its surface-gravity magnitude is with the central static time normalization.
Finally, the Hubble radius must not automatically be called an event horizon. For a flat expanding cosmology, the two future radial null expansions of a sphere of proper radius are . At the ingoing expansion vanishes, while outside it both expansions are positive: this is the cosmological marginal, past-trapped type rather than a future black-hole trapped surface. A dust universe with has such a Hubble sphere but no future event horizon. Global causal boundaries, slice-dependent trapped-surface boundaries, symmetry horizons and initial-data boundaries must therefore be distinguished, even when several coincide in a special example.
In a globally static region, choose the time coordinate along the future timelike Killing vector field . A positive-frequency solution of the Klein-Gordon equation has , with . Assume appropriate boundary conditions and a Cauchy surface so that the conserved Klein-Gordon inner product is
For a real scalar, take the negative-frequency modes to be . Choose a complete normalized basis with
The negative norm of the conjugate modes is crucial; this is not a positive-definite inner product on all classical solutions.
Promote the real Klein-Gordon field to the operator
These canonical commutation relations implement the canonical field and conjugate-momentum commutator. The static vacuum state in a stationary spacetime satisfies , and the Hamiltonian is a sum of oscillators, before zero-point regularization. Continuous labels replace sums by correctly normalized integrals. For a complex charged scalar there are separate particle and antiparticle oscillators, with the same mode-mixing argument in each sector.
Choose independently normalized past and future bases, and use the matrix indices of the question. Complex conjugation of the future positive-frequency expansion immediately gives
Conservation of the Klein-Gordon inner product gives and in this column-index convention. These ensure preservation of the canonical commutation relations.
Let annihilate past modes and annihilate future modes. Extracting the future coefficient from the field gives the Bogoliubov transformation
The minus sign follows from . In the in-vacuum, only contributes to the expectation of the future number operator. Therefore
This is particle number from Bogoliubov coefficients: the intervening time-dependent geometry makes a past positive-frequency mode contain a future negative-frequency component. In infinite volume, localized wave packets avoid delta-function normalization artifacts; a common Fock-space implementation needs the usual square-summability condition on the creation-mixing coefficients.
For gravitational collapse, the initial vacuum can be defined before the hole forms, while late outgoing modes are defined using the asymptotic stationary time at future null infinity. The complete future basis also includes modes falling through the event horizon; exterior outgoing modes alone are not a complete basis of all propagated data. Tracing an outgoing mode backwards near a nonextremal horizon gives the exponential ray relation , where is late retarded time and is the surface gravity. An outgoing factor becomes proportional to in the early advanced coordinate, and contains both frequency signs when Fourier decomposed there. Their squared Bogoliubov-coefficient ratio is ; the canonical normalization then gives a Bose factor , multiplied by the greybody factor, the transmission probability through the exterior potential. Thus Hawking radiation has temperature in units , with greybody factor modifications to the spectrum. This is a free-field calculation on a fixed or slowly evolving background; eventual backreaction is an additional problem, and the nonextremal exponential map must not be blindly used when .
A globally hyperbolic spacetime admits a Cauchy surface: every inextendible causal trajectory meets this spacelike initial-data surface exactly once. Physically, suitable field data on it determine evolution everywhere in its domain without additional data arriving from an unprescribed external boundary. This includes absence of causal loops and pathological almost-loops. An equivalent standard characterization is strong causality together with compact causal diamonds . The Cauchy condition concerns all causal curves, not merely the timelike geodesics that happen to remain in a bounded spatial region.
Both metrics have curvature radius one and signature . Their global topology must be specified as well as their local metric. The usual two-dimensional de Sitter spacetime is the hyperboloid in three-dimensional Minkowski spacetime, parametrized by
Thus and is periodic modulo , for example . Spatial slices are circles. Unwrapping instead gives the universal cover, not the usual closed spatial model.
The ordinary two-dimensional anti-de Sitter spacetime hyperboloid is in ambient signature , with
On this quadric and is periodic modulo . The closed time circles are timelike, so it contains closed timelike curves. The usual physically causal AdS model is its universal cover, for which , with time no longer identified. The signed radial coordinate has two spatial ends; restricting to would retain only half of this global model. The metric by itself cannot distinguish periodic time from the cover. The scalar curvature is for de Sitter and for AdS in the Ricci convention of Q2. Both are maximally symmetric and have no curvature singularity; these toy two-dimensional metrics illustrate causal geometry rather than the ordinary four-dimensional matter field equations.
For the conformal cylinder of two-dimensional de Sitter spacetime, introduce
Then
The conformal boundaries are spacelike circles, representing past and future infinity. Null geodesics are straight lines , with the periodic spatial identification. The finite total conformal-time interval explains the cosmological horizons: light cannot complete a full trip around the circle during the entire history.
For the conformal strip of two-dimensional anti-de Sitter spacetime, use
so on the universal cover
Its two conformal boundaries at are timelike. Null rays are , and the strip extends for arbitrarily long coordinate time. The distances in these conformal diagrams are not physical lengths: a conformal boundary may be reached in finite coordinate time while lying infinitely far away in physical affine parameter.
Figure 1.
Conformal cylinder and observer horizons of two-dimensional de Sitter spacetime, compared with the timelike boundaries and geodesics of the AdS universal cover
. Details.
The sides of the de Sitter diagram are identified; its top and bottom are spacelike infinities. The AdS diagram shows a finite window of an infinite time strip, with no identification of top and bottom. Null rays have slope one in both diagrams. The blue curves are timelike geodesics, while the colored de Sitter lines bound the central observer's causal domains.
The geodesics of two-dimensional de Sitter spacetime can be derived directly. Let an overdot denote an affine parameter normalized so that the tangent norm is for timelike, null and spacelike geodesics. The cyclic coordinate gives conserved , and normalization gives
Writing reduces this to . For a future-directed timelike geodesic,
The spatially comoving curves are geodesics, and every timelike geodesic extends through all , with infinite proper time in both directions. Initially comoving nearby observers have physical separation proportional to , displaying de Sitter's tidal defocusing. Relative separation can initially decrease for other initial velocities; not every pair is monotonically separating.
For a nontrivial null geodesic, and . Hence the conformal infinities at occur at infinite affine parameter, despite their finite values of . For a spacelike geodesic, and . Over a full affine-length period , integrating gives a change . Thus the spacelike geodesics close on the usual cylinder. The special case is the equatorial circle . These closed spacelike curves do not threaten causality.
The geodesics of two-dimensional anti-de Sitter spacetime instead conserve . Their norm equation gives
A future timelike geodesic has and
Its turning points are . Timelike geodesics oscillate rather than escaping to the spatial boundary. For , the central curve is geodesic. Integrating shows that a full proper-time period advances coordinate time by . They close on the periodically identified hyperboloid but remain complete nonclosed curves on the universal cover. Geodesics leaving reconverge at after proper time , illustrating AdS tidal focusing. A static observer at nonzero fixed is accelerated, not one of these oscillating free trajectories.
For AdS null geodesics, and . They approach either timelike conformal boundary at infinite affine parameter, while the coordinate-time travel from the centre is only . A spacelike geodesic has and connects the two spatial ends with infinite affine length. Both global models are geodesically complete. Reflecting a signal at the AdS conformal boundary is a choice of boundary condition for fields; it is not an automatic continuation of a geodesic at a finite affine endpoint.
For the complete de Sitter observer at , let be the shortest angular distance. An event at can send a signal reaching the observer at a finite future time exactly when
It can receive a signal sent by the observer at a finite past time exactly when . Equality gives the future and past observer horizons in two-dimensional de Sitter spacetime; their null branches are respectively and on the displayed cylinder. Their intersection is the central static patch, . All complete timelike geodesic observers have analogous horizons by de Sitter symmetry. These are observer-dependent cosmological horizons, not singularities of the global coordinates or Cauchy horizons.
In contrast, the complete central AdS observer can exchange signals with every event at finite : the conformal distance is finite and the observer exists for all . Its static Killing vector has squared norm everywhere. Thus global AdS on its cover has no cosmological event horizon for this observer, although other restricted patches or accelerated observers can have horizons.
The causal predictability distinction is also important. Global de Sitter is globally hyperbolic: constant- circles are Cauchy surfaces. A causal curve is monotone in and satisfies ; if it ended at finite , compactness of the spatial circle would allow an endpoint and extension. Hence an inextendible causal curve crosses every such slice once. AdS on the cover has no closed timelike curves, but it is not globally hyperbolic. For two central events at and , with , their causal diamond contains events at and arbitrarily large , so it is not compact. Initial data alone do not determine field evolution without conditions at the timelike conformal boundaries. de Sitter has spacelike conformal infinities and cosmological observer horizons; covered AdS has timelike conformal infinities and requires boundary data. The distinction between the AdS quadric and its universal cover is also explained in David Tong's general relativity lectures.
The basic object for integration on an oriented manifold of dimension is a top-degree differential form. In an orientation-preserving chart, write . Its integral is the ordinary integral of , and the coordinate change of variables formula ensures agreement on overlapping oriented charts. A partition of unity combines these local integrals into a global one, provided the form has compact support or satisfies appropriate convergence conditions. Reversing orientation reverses the integral. No metric is needed, although a pseudo-Riemannian metric and orientation supply the volume form . On a nonorientable manifold one instead integrates densities, or appropriately twisted top forms.
A -form is integrated over an oriented -dimensional submanifold by its pullback: if is its embedding, is defined intrinsically on . The Generalized Stokes theorem, with the induced boundary orientation, states
One way to see why this global formula holds is to use an oriented chart and expand as a sum of coordinate derivatives. The ordinary fundamental theorem of calculus gives the boundary contributions with their orientation signs. A partition of unity reduces the manifold to such charts; the artificial internal boundary contributions cancel, leaving only the actual boundary. Compactness or compact support controls the sums and the boundary at infinity.
This immediately explains how closed differential forms yield conservation laws. For a closed differential form , cycles satisfying have equal integrals:
Thus the integral pairs the de Rham cohomology class of with the homology class of the cycle. An exact differential form integrates to zero on every closed cycle. A closed form need not be exact, and nonzero periods measure the global obstruction. If a spacetime current is represented by a closed -form , integrating over two Cauchy surfaces gives a conserved charge provided no current crosses a lateral boundary. A nonzero boundary flux must be retained in the Stokes calculation rather than silently discarded.
For a genuinely topological current, closure can follow identically from the field geometry, without the equations of motion. If a field pulls back a closed differential form on its target, then
For example, for a unit three-component field , the normalized area form is
On a closed oriented spatial two-surface , is the integer degree of a map between oriented manifolds. Smooth evolution is a homotopy and conserves this topological charge. Singularities or flux through a spatial boundary can permit the charge to change. This is the pullback-volume representation of a topological current.
A related example is the magnetic flux of a principal connection, representing a First Chern class when its normalization is integral. Nonzero flux on a closed cycle requires nontrivial global bundle data or singular sources: if a single smooth global potential exists with , the flux on every closed cycle vanishes. This distinction is important when local differential equations are used to infer global conservation or quantization.
A brane with spatial dimensions sweeps out an oriented -dimensional worldvolume , embedded by . Its electric coupling to a -form gauge potential is the Wess-Zumino brane coupling
It is invariant under orientation-preserving changes of worldvolume coordinates. Its field strength is , unchanged by the gauge transformation for a -form . Since the pullback of a differential form commutes with the exterior derivative, its gauge variation is
Therefore a closed brane has a gauge-invariant coupling under these transformations. For a noncompact worldvolume, support or decay conditions must also eliminate contributions at infinity.
For an open brane, the variation does not vanish automatically. If its boundary lies on a manifold carrying a -form , the gauge invariance of an open-brane coupling follows by adding and assigning . The two boundary variations cancel exactly with the induced orientation. Alternatively one may restrict the gauge parameter to have vanishing pullback at the boundary, if that is the chosen physical boundary condition. A particle has and couples by ; a string has and couples to a two-form; a membrane has and couples to a three-form.
Finally, a gauge potential need not be globally a single differential form. Patchwise potentials and their overlap data define its global holonomy. For a large gauge transformation with closed but not necessarily exact, quantum gauge invariance requires
in units . This connects the coupling to integral periods and charge quantization. The local Stokes argument and these global period conditions are complementary: closure controls continuous conservation, while global topology controls which charges and gauge transformations are allowed.
For the printed spacetime, yes. The surfaces , equivalently , are Cauchy surfaces in Minkowski spacetime. Every inextendible causal curve intersects each once; if its monotone time coordinate had a finite endpoint, the bound would give a finite spatial endpoint too, allowing continuation. Causal diamonds are closed and bounded in and hence compact. Therefore the printed spacetime is globally hyperbolic.
Initial data on a Cauchy slice determine unique causal evolution for the usual well-posed hyperbolic field equations, without boundary data at spatial infinity at finite time. The time reparametrization preserves that property.
For the qualified AdS interpretation, no. On the universal cover, choose two central events with enough time separation for a null ray to approach a strip edge and return. Their causal diamond contains a sequence with but no limit in the physical spacetime, so it is noncompact. A constant- surface fails to meet every inextendible causal curve arriving from timelike conformal infinity. Thus even the cover is not globally hyperbolic. Field evolution needs appropriate boundary conditions, such as a reflecting condition compatible with the field theory, as well as initial data. If AdS time itself is periodically identified, closed timelike curves give an additional and more immediate obstruction. These are consequences of the alternative spatial-lapse geometry, not of the printed flat metric tensor.
Use a free real scalar field obeying a linear Klein-Gordon equation, for example . This linearity is the assumption that permits mode evolution by a Bogoliubov transformation. Work with a complete set of normalized modes, or normalizable wave packets when the spectrum is continuous. The stationary asymptotic regions supply time translations relative to which positive-frequency solutions and their complex conjugates can be distinguished.
For solutions define the conserved Klein-Gordon inner product
Here is a Cauchy surface with future-directed normal. Its conservation follows by applying the wave equation to the divergence of its current, provided boundary flux is included or vanishes. Let be a positive-frequency basis in the past and one in the future, each propagated as a solution through the intermediate geometry. Normalize them by , and , with the corresponding identities for the future basis. The two field expansions are
The canonical commutation relations give and . The in-vacuum satisfies , while the out-vacuum satisfies . They are generally different vacua.
Fix the coefficient convention by expanding future modes in past modes:
The minus sign is due to the negative norm of the conjugate modes. Taking the Klein-Gordon inner product with the field, which is antilinear in its first entry, gives
Both frequency sectors are needed: if , a future annihilation operator contains a past creation operator. This is the mechanism of particle number from Bogoliubov coefficients, not a classical nonzero mean field.
Computing and explicitly gives the canonical identities for a bosonic Bogoliubov transformation:
Completeness also gives the inverse . Thus the evolved past vacuum, viewed in the future Fock space, obeys
For a finite-mode treatment with invertible , solve this condition by a multimode squeezed vacuum:
The canonical identities make symmetric. Commuting through the exponential gives , which directly verifies the vacuum condition. Its normalization is . A general initial state is obtained by applying its initial creation-operator polynomial and expressing those operators in the future basis. In infinitely many modes, a common unitary Fock representation requires the creation-mixing coefficients to be Hilbert-Schmidt; finite wave-packet counts avoid treating delta-normalized modes as individual normalizable states. These are the bosonic mode mixing implementability conditions, rather than an assumption of arbitrary finite total creation over an infinite time interval.
For the requested number operator of one future mode, set . Expectations below are in the evolved past vacuum , equivalently in using the Heisenberg-mode operators above. Acting on the past vacuum gives , whose squared norm is
The mean particle number vanishes exactly when that mode has no negative-frequency mixing.
The second moment needs the anomalous contraction
The canonical commutation relations give . Moreover,
Its vacuum and two-particle pieces are orthogonal. Applying the commutation relations twice shows
The two pairings each contribute to the squared norm. Hence the full answer is
Thus . These are the out-mode number fluctuations in the in-vacuum. Omitting would assume a property not given in the general question. A thermal single mode has , giving . A single-mode squeezed vacuum state instead has , giving .
If the counted observable is the total number over a finite set of future modes, its moments follow by retaining cross-mode correlations as well. Define and . The same vacuum pairings give . Thus and , with and . Independent thermal counts cannot be assumed for a general correlated squeezed state.
For Hawking radiation, choose the incoming vacuum at past null infinity of a collapse spacetime and propagate late outgoing modes backwards. Near a nonextremal forming event horizon, the logarithmic tortoise-coordinate divergence leads to the Hawking exponential ray map
where is late retarded time, is an early regular affine null coordinate and is the final surface gravity. A late positive-frequency mode therefore becomes proportional to on rays escaping just before horizon formation. This is not positive-frequency with respect to : it has both frequency signs and hence nonzero .
The thermal factor can be seen directly. With , and a regulator , the relevant Fourier integrals are
As , the arguments of the two complex factors approach . Their squared-modulus ratio for the suppressed and enhanced frequency branches is . Thus the thermal ratio of Hawking Bogoliubov coefficients, combined with the canonical normalization, yields the bosonic occupation
in units . Scattering through the exterior potential multiplies the asymptotic occupation by the appropriate greybody factor.
A complete future mode description includes modes crossing the horizon as well as modes reaching future null infinity. The global incoming vacuum develops correlations between these sectors; restricting to the exterior gives approximately thermal outgoing occupation rather than a claim that the complete pure state became a thermal mixed state. This is the particle-production picture of a collapsing black hole, not an incoming thermal bath on an eternal geometry. Including backreaction turns the emitted positive energy into black-hole mass loss. The renormalized quantum stress tensor is not subject to the pointwise classical positivity used in the black-hole area theorem, so this does not contradict its classical proof.