Ingoing Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
The advanced coordinate puts the radial Schwarzschild metric into the formwhich is regular at the future horizon.
These are the advanced, ingoing member of the Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2003 iii Paper 56 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Take and write . Integrating gives the Schwarzschild tortoise coordinateThe advanced and retarded Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates are respectively and . Substituting or givesBoth radial-time blocks have determinant and smooth coefficients at . Consequently the Schwarzschild event horizon is a coordinate singularity of the original chart, not a degeneracy of the geometry. The Kretschmann scalar is finite there, while it diverges at . Angular coordinate degeneracies at the polar axes are removed separately by ordinary sphere charts.
The Ingoing Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates extend the right exterior through its future black hole horizon. Radial null geodesics obey either or . Inside , the latter also moves towards smaller as increases, and the future-directed ingoing family has decreasing . Thus neither family can escape to the exterior. The future horizon is the boundary separating points that can send signals to future null infinity from those that cannot. The retarded chart extends through the past horizon instead. Reversing the time orientation gives the white hole: future-directed signals can leave it, but exterior signals cannot enter it. These are distinct branches in the eternal extension; the white-hole branch need not occur in a spacetime formed by collapse.
For a simultaneous extension through both branches, start in the right exterior and define the Kruskal–Szekeres coordinatesTheir product and the extended metric areIndeed and transform into the displayed expression. The function of on the right of the product relation has derivative , nonzero at , so is a smooth function of across zero. The coefficient of there is , finite and nonzero. Allowing either sign of therefore gives the regular maximal extension with and .
With and , the radial metric is a positive multiple of . The two exterior regions have and . The future interior, or black hole region, has ; the past interior, or white hole region, has . The Killing horizons are and , meeting on the bifurcation surface at .
For the Penrose diagram, compactify the null variables before forming time and space:This Schwarzschild conformal compactification preserves radial null directions because . The ranges bound the diagram, and cuts off its future and past tips. On with , , so the future curvature singularity is . The past curvature singularity is similarly . Both have and are spacelike. The horizon lines remain .
Penrose diagram of maximally extended Schwarzschild spacetime, with two exteriors, black and white hole interiors, horizons and conformal infinities
. Details. Each point of this radial Penrose diagram represents a two-sphere, except at limiting boundaries. Each exterior has its own future and past null infinity, and . For example in the right exterior, at fixed gives , whereas at fixed gives . Its spacelike infinity is ; its future and past timelike infinity are the vertices and . The left exterior has the reflected counterparts. These conformal boundary points are ideal endpoints, not finite-distance spacetime events; the physical affine or proper parameters of escaping geodesics diverge.
The horizons are regular null surfaces, while the horizontal boundaries are genuine curvature singularities. The central point represents the regular bifurcation surface, not a singularity. Future-directed radial causal curves have nondecreasing , so a curve cannot go from one exterior to the other: changing the requisite signs would require one null variable to decrease. Crossing a future horizon instead leads towards the future singularity. The maximal extension has two causally disconnected exteriors, a future black-hole region and a past white-hole region.
