Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2012 iii Paper 58 2 d Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-07
An ergoregion of a stationary spacetime is where the stationary Killing vector field, normalized as time translation at infinity, is spacelike; a fixed-coordinate stationary observer cannot remain timelike there. For the Kerr metric, , so the outer stationary-limit surface isFor a subextremal rotating hole , with equality only at the poles. At the equator . The ergosphere touches the horizon on the rotation axis and is outside it elsewhere. Its boundary is not the horizon, whose generator is .
Kerr horizon and outer stationary-limit surface in an oblate-coordinate meridional sketch
. The drawing uses oblate Cartesian coordinates to display the intersection and is not an isometric embedding of the spatial geometry.
