Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 iii Paper 54 4 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
The Physical-process first law for a rotating black hole, in four-dimensional general relativity with , isIt applies to a small neutral matter influx into an initially stationary, nonextremal black hole that settles to another stationary state. The background surface gravity and angular velocity are and , and are the Killing energy and angular momentum delivered through the event horizon. Other conserved charges are held fixed. The perturbation must be small enough that its horizon generators do not develop caustics, and all equalities below are to first order.
Let be the stationary Killing vector field normalized at infinity, and the axial Killing vector field with -periodic orbits. The horizon generator is . Choose an affine tangent and parameter with zero at the past stationary limiting section, so affine horizon-generator scaling gives, on the background horizonThe background null expansion and null shear vanish, and null twist vanishes for the hypersurface-orthogonal horizon generators. Linearizing the Null Raychaudhuri equation and using the Einstein field equations givesThe quadratic null expansion and null shear terms are second order. With background cross-sectional measure , the first-order area change is . Multiplying the evolution equation by and integrating by parts gives the first-order horizon-area response to matter fluxThe boundary term vanishes: at the past limiting section, and the final stationary boundary condition gives zero expansion in the settled future. Equivalently, assume a sufficiently localized influx with the required late-time decay.
The energy and angular-momentum fluxes have signsThese correspond to the particle conventions and . Their combination isThis proves the requested Physical-process first law of black-hole mechanics. For charged infall the corresponding law contains an additional horizon-potential term ; the energy-minus-angular-momentum version assumes that work term is absent.