Coordinate invariance of the Schwarzschild photon radial potential Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-10-25
A stationary time-coordinate change leaves both the areal radius and the time-translation Killing vector field unchanged. The conserved Killing energy and angular momentum of a null geodesic therefore yield the same radial equation in either chart, . The effective potential and radial turning points agree, even when the coordinate time velocities and horizon regularity differ.
The inward radial geodesic congruence with unit Killing energy has , where . Its metric dual is , so is a synchronized proper time for the congruence. Locally . This yields Painlevé–Gullstrand coordinates with flat spatial slices and a regular future horizon.
Geodesic conserved quantity from a Killing vector Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Each Killing vector field supplies a conserved quantity for freely moving test particles: it turns a geometric symmetry into a first integral of the geodesic equation. Let be a geodesic with affine parameter , tangent vector , and . Wherever a Killing vector field is defined along the geodesic,The statement applies to Riemannian manifolds and to timelike geodesics, null geodesics and spacelike geodesics in a Lorentzian manifold. It requires an affine parameter; for a massive test particle, proper time is one choice. See Tong, section 4.3.2, equation (4.32).
For a worked example in the Euclidean plane, take with affine parameter and velocity . The Euclidean Killing vector fields for translation and rotation giveThe rotational field along the geodesic is : it changes from at to at , yet its pairing with stays . With toy mass and interpreted as time, the first constant is the component of linear momentum, and the second is the signed component of angular momentum about the origin. Their numerical values use toy units. The geodesic is straight; the rotation flow orbits are circles.
One straight Euclidean geodesic: the rotational Killing field varies while translation momentum and angular momentum stay constant for toy unit mass
. Details. This conservation law follows from metric compatibility and the Killing equation:The geodesic equation kills the acceleration term, and the symmetric product selects the vanishing symmetric derivative. This tensor contraction is the whole proof outline; see Carroll, equation (5.43).
In a stationary spacetime, a chosen time-translation Killing vector field gives Killing energy. With metric signature , , and a massive test particle's four-momentum , the physical normalization isHere generates the axial rotational symmetry when one exists. In coordinates with and , these are and . Both are conserved quantities along the geodesic, even if the metric has a time-angle cross term. A future timelike makes positive for a future massive particle; the scale of depends on the normalization of . Not every spacetime has a global timelike Killing vector field, and a stationary field can become spacelike in an ergoregion of a stationary spacetime. Conservation on the field's domain does not imply a universal global positive energy; see Tong, sections 4.3.1-4.3.2 on the timelike-domain qualification and conserved charges.
Gravitational redshift 2026-10-13
In a static spacetime with , a photon has conserved Killing energy . A static observer with four-velocity measures frequency proportional to . Hence light emitted at one lapse and received at another obeys the displayed ratio. For it gives the weak-field shift . This local clock effect does not require light-ray bending.
An upward photon has lower received frequency when compared with the receiver's local clock: makes the shift negative. The corresponding upper clock runs faster in a comparison using the same static time coordinate. These are reciprocal descriptions of gravitational redshift and gravitational time dilation, not opposite predictions. A locally measured speed of light remains .
Homogeneous dust-ball matching 2026-10-14
At the boundary of an Oppenheimer-Snyder cloud, its areal radius is . Matching to a Schwarzschild metric gives . Thus and . The boundary is a radial timelike geodesic with specific Killing energy . Its radial equation is . The induced metric and the angular extrinsic curvature agree on both sides, so no surface layer is required.
Killing energy 2026-10-06
For a geodesic tangent and a stationary Killing vector field , the Killing energy is . It is conserved along the geodesic. When is future timelike and is future causal, for a nonzero tangent; it need not be positive where becomes spacelike.
Local radial speed of a Schwarzschild geodesic Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-10-25
For a radial timelike geodesic of specific Killing energy , the static observer measures . Its relative Lorentz factor is , giving .
Past exam of the general relativity and cosmology course of the University of Oxford 2016 1 Solution 2026-10-25
Constants and radial motion. Write and . A Schwarzschild black hole has spherical symmetry, so its conserved angular momentum fixes an orbital plane through the centre. A rotation of the angular coordinates puts any nonradial orbit in the equatorial plane. A radial orbit can also be placed in such a plane. This is a choice of coordinates, not a restriction on the possible orbital inclinations.
The quadratic geodesic Lagrangian, with a dot denoting differentiation with respect to the satellite's proper time, isThe last equality is four-velocity normalization, imposed after deriving the Euler-Lagrange equations. The cyclic coordinates give independent conserved specific Killing energy and angular momentum:Here is the conserved energy per unit rest energy and has dimensions of angular momentum per unit mass. Substituting them in the normalization condition givesThe two signs of distinguish outgoing and ingoing branches; the expression must be nonnegative on the allowed radial interval.
For a nonradial orbit, put . Since , the radial equation becomesDifferentiating and extending continuously through isolated radial turning points givesA circular solution can equivalently be obtained directly from the radial geodesic equation, avoiding division by everywhere on that special orbit.
Circular launch and the station's clock. For the orbit equation givesThe static astronaut measures circumferential proper length and station proper time . Thus the Schwarzschild circular-orbit local speed and return time areThis is a local speed measured with the astronaut's clock, not the satellite's proper velocity . After one azimuthal revolution the circular satellite meets the fixed station again. For comparison, the satellite's own elapsed proper time would instead be .
A static station requires ; a timelike circular satellite requires , since the local circular speed must be below . The circular orbit is stable only for , marginal at , and unstable for . Thus a request for a robust near-circular trajectory implicitly needs more than merely placing the station outside the horizon.
Slightly changing the launch speed. In the stable, bound regime, a small tangential increase makes the launch point a pericentre; a small decrease makes it an apocentre, provided the perturbed orbit remains outside its plunge separatrix. In either case the orbit is a precessing rosette, not an exactly closed Newtonian ellipse. For an explicit first-order description write and . ThenThe tangential launch gives . At the station, , so and . ThereforeThis perturbative expression also requires the resulting radial excursion to be small compared with ; close to the innermost stable orbit, alone does not ensure that.
The Schwarzschild launch-orbit recurrence needs care when deciding whether a collision is inevitable. The satellite returns to radius once per radial cycle, after an azimuthal advance approximately . It returns to the station's exact point only if an integer number of radial cycles also gives an integer number of azimuthal revolutions. Rational gives an exact return; an irrational ratio gives arbitrarily close approaches but no exact post-launch return for ideal point objects. At , for example, the linearized ratio is , illustrating why precession alone does not prove an exact collision. For generic bound orbits the dense recurrence eventually threatens any station and satellite of nonzero size; a resonant closed rosette returns exactly. A small speed adjustment is therefore not a robust permanent collision-avoidance manoeuvre for a bound satellite.
There is no unconditional collision conclusion without specifying the regime. An unstable circular orbit cannot support the small bounded oscillations used above. In particular, near the circular specific energy is already ; a small positive speed increment can send the satellite outward on an unbound escape orbit, with no subsequent return to . Such an escape is a different way to avoid a future encounter. Radiation reaction and manoeuvres have been excluded throughout the ideal test-particle calculation.
Bound Schwarzschild trajectories after small positive and negative tangential launch-speed changes
. Details. The time-translation Killing vector field of the Schwarzschild metric gives a conserved Killing energy per unit rest mass,For unit rest mass, this is the total energy relative to infinity, including rest energy. At release , so the four-velocity normalization gives andSubstitution into the radial four-velocity normalization yieldsChoosing the inward square root and evaluating at the ground provesThis identity is exact within the assumed Schwarzschild metric, despite its familiar Newtonian mechanics form. The quantity is not exactly the locally measured speed. A Schwarzschild static observer measures . Thus the distinction disappears in the stated weak-field approximation, giving for .
Past exam of the general relativity II course of the University of Oxford 2021 3 b Solution 2026-10-25
The inverse of the metric tensor block isThe normal covector has squared norm . ThereforeMore explicitly, the induced metric tensor is ; at zero its sole zero direction is . The coefficients are independent of , so is a Killing vector field. On ,Hence is both tangent and normal to this null hypersurface, proving it is a Killing horizon. The definition of surface gravity is on the Killing horizon, or equivalently . Since vanishes there while ,Thus this is a degenerate Killing horizon, and is an affine parameter on each of its null geodesics.
For a concrete horizon frequency comparison, fix the same angular position for a narrow high-frequency light beam and two freely falling radial observers. Work in geometric optics, with the beam's affinely transported wavevector tangent to the Killing horizon, . Here is constant because . Choose the observers as translates of one timelike geodesic by the isometry generated by , crossing at and . Give them the same positive Killing energy per unit rest mass, . At their crossings their normalized four-velocities havewhich satisfy . They can be realized by local geodesics with precisely these initial data. The measured angular frequency isTo connect this measurement to surface gravity, if with constant , affine transport of would give . For observers related by the same Killing vector field translation, agrees at the crossings, giving . Here there is no accumulated redshift along the Killing horizon for these equally prepared observers. Arbitrary observers with different four-velocities can still measure different frequencies through their different Killing energies.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 iii Paper 62 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-18
Use geometrized units and positive mass . The Schwarzschild metric initially describes an exterior region, not the whole black hole:Here is the areal radius and is Schwarzschild time, normalized at infinity. We must distinguish a removable coordinate singularity from a genuine curvature singularity. The Kretschmann scalar isIt is finite at and diverges at . Thus can be crossed in a better chart, whereas cannot be made a regular point by changing the coordinate chart.
First integrate the Schwarzschild tortoise coordinate:The radial metric becomes . Set ; the ingoing Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates giveThe radial block has determinant minus one and smooth coefficients at , so it extends through the future Schwarzschild event horizon. Its ingoing radial null geodesics have constant , while the outgoing radial null geodesics obey . In the future interior both future-directed radial null families decrease ; is therefore an unavoidable future boundary for causal motion there. The outgoing chart similarly gives , extending through the past horizon. A single one of these null charts does not display both horizons or the entire extension.
To regularize both horizons together, introduce Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates in the original exterior:ThenFor the right side defining decreases monotonically from one to minus infinity. In fact its derivative is . Thus it determines a unique smooth wherever , including . At the radial metric coefficient is finite and nonzero, proving actual regularity of both horizons and their intersection, rather than merely relabelling the old coordinate divergence. Allowing all real with produces the simply connected maximal analytic extension, the Kruskal spacetime.
There are four regions of the Kruskal spacetime. The original exterior is ; a second asymptotically flat exterior is . The future black hole has and ; the past white hole has and the same range of areal radius. The horizon branches are and . Their intersection is a regular bifurcation surface, a two-sphere of radius , not the centre of the spacetime. Each point of the radial diagram represents a symmetry two-sphere.
Put and . Radial null geodesics have slopes , and the curvature singularities haveThe upper branch is the future spacelike Schwarzschild singularity; the lower branch is the white hole past singularity. The Killing vector field extends as . It is future directed in the original exterior and past directed in the other exterior for the chosen global time orientation; inside, this stationary vector is spacelike. In the future interior, is a time coordinate decreasing toward the singularity. For example, a radial infaller of unit specific Killing energy obeys and reaches from the horizon in finite proper time . The curvature divergence and this geodesic endpoint show why the extension stops there.
For the global causal picture, compactify the null coordinates using , and let , . The conformal compactification rescales the metric to remove the coordinate factors from the radial metric while preserving its null directions. Since gives on the two singular branches, they become the horizontal lines . The resulting Penrose diagram displays the two exteriors, each with its own past null infinity, future null infinity and spatial infinity, plus the future and past interiors. The singularities are spacelike boundaries; the horizons are interior null surfaces. Future event horizons separate events that can escape to an exterior's future null infinity from events in the black-hole interior.
Kruskal and compactified diagrams of the maximal Schwarzschild extension, showing both exteriors, horizons and spacelike singularities
. Details. The time-symmetric spatial slice has a bridge between the exteriors, but it is not a traversable passage. Future-directed causal curves have nondecreasing and . Moving from the right exterior to the left would require to decrease from positive to negative; the reverse passage would require to decrease. Both are impossible. This proves the non-traversability of the Schwarzschild bridge. The complete eternal vacuum extension has two exteriors, a black hole and a white hole; it has no causal route between its exteriors. A black hole made by stellar collapse is a different global spacetime: its matter-filled past replaces the white hole region, and it normally has only one exterior. The vacuum extension constructed here should not be mistaken for the collapse history of a single star.
With electric charge, spherical electrovacuum instead gives the Reissner-Nordstrom metric, in an electromagnetic normalization absorbing the charge conversion constants:For , there are two simple horizons. Outside the metric is static; between and , and is timelike. Inside , again, so is spacelike and the singularity is timelike. The outer horizon is the event horizon; the inner horizon is a Cauchy horizon. The same logarithmic tortoise-coordinate and exponential-null-coordinate method crosses each simple horizon locally, but one exponential scale does not regularize both simultaneously: their surface gravities have different magnitudes,Continuing the exact metric through successive inner horizons produces repeated blocks with further exteriors, and evolution beyond a Cauchy horizon is not uniquely fixed by data on the original Cauchy hypersurface. The timelike singularity can be avoided by some trajectories in this ideal extension, unlike the unavoidable spacelike singularity of the future Schwarzschild spacetime interior. However, the enormous inner-horizon blueshift makes this exact continuation unstable: perturbations can cause mass inflation. This is an important qualification on the global structure of a charged spherical black hole.
At the two horizons coalesce, and surface gravity is zero. The horizon is a degenerate Killing horizon, the tortoise-coordinate divergence becomes a pole and the ordinary nondegenerate Kruskal spacetime construction must be replaced. The exterior develops an infinitely long spatial throat and the formal Hawking temperature vanishes. For , no real zero of remains: the electrovacuum solution has a naked singularity, not a black hole. Consequently arbitrarily allowing charge changes the causal structure, not just the horizon radius.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 iii Paper 62 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use Planck units for the following formulas. The black-hole area theorem is a classical statement with hypotheses. Assume the Einstein field equations, the null energy condition and appropriate global future regularity/predictability. For a clean version of the focusing sketch, take the future horizon generators to remain on a regular horizon and to be future complete in affine parameter. The usual strong asymptotic predictability formulation supplies the global causal control needed to exclude the same focusing pathology; an arbitrary spacetime with naked future breakdown is not covered by the theorem.
Let be an affinely parametrized generator of a smooth portion of the event horizon, and let be its null expansion. The horizon is a null hypersurface, so its generators have zero null twist. In four dimensions the Null Raychaudhuri equation isThe Einstein field equations give , since the metric terms vanish when contracted with a null vector. The screen-space null shear term is also nonnegative, so . If at , integrating this inequality while the congruence remains regular givesIt focuses within affine distance at most . The vanishing area element is a focal point to an earlier spacelike horizon cut. Past such a point the null geodesic can no longer generate an achronal boundary, but the event horizon is precisely such a boundary. Future completeness and the global hypotheses exclude its escaping this contradiction by ending prematurely at a pathology. Therefore everywhere the smooth horizon description applies.
Integrate between ordered horizon cuts. Every continuing generator contributes a nondecreasing area element. New generators can enter at past endpoints or merger crease sets, adding area; generators cannot leave a regular future horizon through future endpoints under these hypotheses. Thus, including the total area of disconnected components,This is the future-complete horizon focusing proof of the area theorem. A smooth elementary congruence proof requires the stated regularity; the general theorem also treats the horizon's nonsmooth joining set rather than assuming mergers have a globally smooth horizon.
Hawking radiation changes the situation because the quantum field state in a collapsing geometry is not a classical positive-energy fluid. For a large isolated Schwarzschild black hole,in natural units. Outgoing quantum modes at future null infinity have a nearly thermal occupation, modified by greybody factors; an accompanying negative Killing energy flux near the horizon reduces the hole's mass. On timescales short compared with the evaporation time but long compared with , its geometry is approximately Schwarzschild spacetime with slowly decreasing . It is not an exactly stationary vacuum solution with a parameter changed by hand: the radiation's stress-energy tensor sources the time dependence through the semiclassical Einstein equation. The distant luminosity is carried by the outgoing radiation, while the horizon-area decrease accompanies the inward negative-energy contribution.
As the black hole loses mass, its horizon scale and Bekenstein-Hawking entropy shrink, its temperature rises and its luminosity increases. This is the negative heat capacity of a Schwarzschild black hole. Large astrophysical holes evaporate extremely slowly in isolation; small holes evaporate more rapidly, and increasingly massive particle species become accessible as the temperature rises. An incoming radiation bath or accretion can instead offset the loss, so the pure evaporation law assumes negligible incoming energy. A formal complete evaporation also raises the black hole information paradox; the low-curvature calculation alone does not determine how information or the final state is resolved.
For an elementary luminosity estimate, treat the horizon as emitting photon blackbody radiation. In natural units the Stefan–Boltzmann law has , givingThe horizon area used here is an estimate of emitting area, not the exact frequency-dependent absorption cross-section. More generally write , where includes the greybody factors and the active particle species. For constant effective , energy balance and direct integration giveHere is time measured at infinity. The formal evaporation timescale is ; with the photon blackbody estimate it is . Restoring constants givesfor that specified estimate. If particle thresholds make mass dependent, the precise leading law is instead . The robust result is the inverse-square mass-loss rate for a fixed species regime and the cubic mass scaling of its lifetime. This is the semiclassical cubic mass law for Schwarzschild evaporation. Extrapolating its zero to a definite end state is unjustified once approaches the Planck mass and curvature requires quantum gravity.
There is no contradiction with the classical area theorem: the renormalized quantum stress-energy tensor can violate the null energy condition used in the focusing inequality. In the evaporation regime,which is permitted when that hypothesis fails. The thermodynamic replacement is the generalized second law, concerning rather than horizon area alone. Outside radiation can carry entropy while the hole's Bekenstein-Hawking entropy decreases.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 iii Paper 62 4 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-18
Use geometrized units until converting the clock readings. By the Birkhoff theorem, the spherical vacuum exterior is a portion of the Schwarzschild spacetime with fixed mass :The exterior is not flat and is not radiating merely because the surface moves. When the surface crosses , this exterior must be represented in regular ingoing Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates, rather than treating the Schwarzschild-coordinate divergence as a physical barrier.
The Oppenheimer-Snyder model has a homogeneous pressureless matter interior. Since its initial expansion vanishes but its density is positive, the Friedmann equation requires positive spatial curvature. Choose a comoving radial angle and the boundary's proper time , with the stopwatch set to zero at release. The interior FLRW metric and density areThe density law follows from the dust stress-energy tensor and its covariant conservation. The Friedmann equation and the initial rest condition giveIts contracting branch has the parameterizationIndeed and satisfy the displayed equation; is the turning point and is the final curvature singularity.
For homogeneous dust-ball matching, the boundary has areal radius . Matching its mass to the exterior givesThis is the gravitational mass parameter, not the integral of rest density over the curved proper-volume element. The matching can also be checked directly. The outward angular extrinsic curvature inside is ; outside it is . The boundary motion hasso these curvatures agree. The induced metric is on both sides and because the pressure-free boundary is geodesic. No artificial surface stress layer is required.
The observer moving with this boundary meets the event horizon when . From , the proper-time horizon crossing in homogeneous dust collapse occurs atThe singularity is reached at , so the remaining clock time isThese are finite proper times, even though the external static time diverges at horizon crossing.
Convert the supplied rounded units consistently: Planck masses and Planck lengths. Thus , , and in Planck units. Multiplying geometric times by seconds givesAt the accuracy justified by the rounded constants, these are about three milliseconds to horizon crossing and about seven microseconds more to the singularity. For , expanding gives , independently confirming the microsecond scale. The exact expression above retains the finite release-radius correction.
Strictly, this boundary clock reading is when the observer crosses the horizon, not when the horizon first exists anywhere. The event horizon inside an Oppenheimer-Snyder cloud is an outgoing radial null ray. Since , the interior metric is conformal to , and that ray has . Tracing it back from givesFor this cloud it starts at the centre after release, at comoving time seconds. This answers the literal global-formation interpretation as well; it is not an event on the outer observer's worldline. The distinction matters because an event horizon is defined by the entire future causal escape problem, not by a locally detectable signal of formation.
For the observer at infinity, use the boundary's conserved Killing energy in the exterior:As , and . Consequentlywhere fixes a harmless dimensionless logarithm. For actual outgoing light signals the relevant retarded time is . Since ,Therefore she never receives a signal showing the surface cross the horizon at any finite asymptotic time. Radiation emitted ever closer to crossing arrives ever later and is increasingly redshifted and diluted; photons emitted at or inside the event horizon cannot reach her. The formal crossing time at infinity is infinite, not the finite boundary stopwatch reading. Nor can the earlier global birth of the horizon be observed directly as a local flash from its central birth event.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 ii Paper 1 35C Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Stationarity gives the conserved Killing energy per unit rest mass , where dots here denote proper-time derivatives. It measures energy relative to the time-translation Killing field; a static local observer measures . Timelike normalization isEliminating and setting givesThus, on each increasing/decreasing leg respectively, and . The printed positive differentials describe the increasing leg, not both legs at once. Differentiation along a leg gives , extending smoothly through the turning points. Hence and the proper-time period is .
The requested velocity sketches are the branches and . They share the turning points and opposite signs on the two legs; their speed ratio is , smaller than one near zero and larger than one near the endpoints. The supplied integral is the coordinate time from to , equal to . The return leg takes the same time, so the coordinate-time period is also .
For the perturbed metric the same Killing conservation gives , and normalization becomes . Since ,Both weights without are even in . Oddness of makes its integral over the symmetric excursion vanish. Each increasing leg therefore still takes in either clock; the decreasing leg takes the same integrals with reversed orientation. Both periods remain exactly , although the proper-time waveform is no longer generally sinusoidal. This is the odd radial perturbations preserve timelike-geodesic periods mechanism. Smoothness of the metric and positivity of ensure regular turning and monotone coordinate time.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 63 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use geometrized units, and denote the beacon's proper time by to distinguish it from the short emitted duration . Take at release. The period , the duration , and the wavelength are measured by the beacon's own clock. Its radial timelike geodesic has conserved Killing energy per unit rest mass , where . Initially at , so . Normalization of the four-velocity givesFor the Schwarzschild radial fall from rest at a finite radius, introduceIndeed and reproduce the inward radial equation. At the Schwarzschild event horizon, and . HenceThis is the finite falling-clock time to the event horizon. By contrast, Schwarzschild time obeys and diverges at crossing. Near the horizon , so and .
Every outward optical pulse emitted while can reach a distant observer, and no pulse emitted after entry into the future black-hole region can do so. The infinite coordinate crossing time does not produce infinite emissions, because the pulse clock runs in proper time. If there is a pulse at release, the escape times are for . Thus 24 pulses are received, counting the pulse at release; 23 are emitted subsequently during the fall. More generally the PDF does not specify the phase of the pulse clock. For a first emission at with , the finite pulse count for a falling Schwarzschild beacon isThe ceiling handles a pulse scheduled exactly at crossing correctly: it cannot escape. This count concerns pulses associated with the fall, not any pulses emitted before release, and assumes an ideal observer able to detect arbitrarily redshifted signals.
To find the stretching of an optical pulse, use the Schwarzschild tortoise coordinate . An outward radial null geodesic has constant Schwarzschild retarded null coordinate . At an observer's fixed large radius , its arrival time is ; therefore only the varying emission value of contributes to the interval between arriving wavefronts. Differentiating along the falling source givesThe outgoing pulse redshift from a radial Schwarzschild infaller includes both gravitational redshift and the emitter's inward Doppler shift. A short pulse emitted at radius has, to leading order in its duration,For a finite receiver radius, replace by to measure the receiver's proper time and frequency; this correction is negligible for . The inverse scaling of frequency follows because the number of carrier cycles is unchanged when the pulse is stretched. Here is ordinary frequency, not angular frequency, in units with light speed one.
Under the release-phase convention, the last emission is at . Solve to obtain , , and . Because and this pulse begins before crossing, the local short-pulse approximation applies. Thus its approximate observed duration and frequency areWithout fixing that phase, these numerical coefficients are not unique: put , find from the parameterization, and use the boxed general formulas. For a last pulse close to crossing, with but , the horizon redshift of a Schwarzschild infaller gives the useful estimatesIf a phase instead places the pulse within one pulse-duration of crossing, , a single constant stretching factor is inappropriate. The received extent of a complete escaping pulse is exactly ; a pulse straddling crossing has an escaping tail extending to arbitrarily late arrival times, whose instantaneous frequency tends to zero. The finite count remains valid, while its last-pulse duration then has no finite constant multiple of . This identifies precisely what the unspecified pulse phase can change.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 63 4 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use geometrized units and assume , , so the Reissner-Nordstrom spacetime contains a black hole. Its outer event horizon is . The classical absorption cross-section is obtained in geometrical optics, by counting incident null geodesics captured from infinity. Spherical symmetry lets us use the equatorial plane. Write , and let a dot denote differentiation with respect to an affine parameter. The conserved Killing energy and angular momentum are and . Null normalization giveswhere the impact parameter is and . An incoming ray turns around if the angular-momentum barrier reaches before the ray reaches the event horizon. The limiting captured ray approaches the exterior unstable circular null geodesic, at the maximum of .
The stationary-point equation isThe outer root is the photon sphere radiusIt lies outside : for it ranges from down to , whereas ranges from down to . More precisely except in the extremal case, and ; even at extremality . At this root,so the circular null geodesic is unstable. The smaller stationary root lies at or inside the outer horizon and does not set capture from infinity. For , the radial equation has no exterior turning point and the ray enters the event horizon; for , it turns around. The critical impact parameter is thereforeThe stationary-point equation gives , hence . Since a parallel incident beam is captured over a disk of radius , the photon capture cross-section of a Reissner-Nordstrom black hole isThe equality case approaches the unstable orbit indefinitely, but it is a measure-zero boundary of the captured disk and does not change the cross-section.
For the suggested parameterization, choose with and . Then , so the same cross-section isThe black-hole range has , hence . For , , , and , givingthe classical Schwarzschild black hole light-capture result. As an additional limit check, gives , , and . These are geometric capture areas, larger than the corresponding horizon areas; the relevant barrier is the photon sphere, not the horizon's apparent disk. The result applies to light in the short-wavelength limit, while a finite-frequency wave absorption cross-section depends on the greybody factors.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 iii Paper 66 3 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use geometrized units . The Physical-process first law of black-hole mechanics concerns a small perturbation of a rotating black hole in an initially stationary spacetime by infalling matter, followed by relaxation to another stationary spacetime. For an uncharged black hole, or neutral accretion with charge held fixed, its first-order statement isHere is the background surface gravity, is the background horizon angular velocity, and is the change in event horizon area. The energy and angular momentum are the fluxes carried into the event horizon; when these account for the changes of the black hole, they equal and its change of angular momentum. The result is a linearized law, not an exact identity for a finite violent accretion event. The perturbation must be small enough that focusing does not produce new caustics or invalidate the expansion about the existing generators.
Let be the stationary Killing vector field normalized at infinity, the axial Killing vector field with -periodic orbits, andOn the background Killing horizon, is its future-directed null generator and satisfies . Choose a parameter with . The null expansion in this parameter is . The generator is not affinely parametrized; if is affine, then after an appropriate choice of affine origin, with . Rescaling the Null Raychaudhuri equation givesThe null twist vanishes because the generators are normal to the event horizon. By the Einstein field equations, . Background null expansion and null shear vanish on a Killing horizon of the background stationary spacetime. Thus and are first order, their squares are second order, and the linearized equation isThe final stationary spacetime supplies the boundary condition in the future. Explicitly,This future boundary condition reflects the global definition of the event horizon. For localized infall, also tends to zero in the remote past. Integrating the linearized equation along the generators, and then over a background cross-section with area element , givesUsing the background area element introduces only second-order corrections.
With orientations chosen so that future infalling positive energy has positive flux, the conserved Killing energy and axial angular momentum giveConsequently , proving the displayed Physical-process first law of black-hole mechanics. Restoring replaces by . The null energy condition makes the integral nonnegative and therefore implies area increase in this regime; that condition is needed for the sign conclusion, not for the linearized flux identity itself. Charged infall would require the additional electrostatic work term, and an extremal background needs separate treatment because the proof uses .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 iii Paper 66 3 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Let be the future-directed causal four-momentum of the fragment captured by the Kerr black hole. In signature its conserved Killing energy and axial angular momentum areThe future-directed null generator of the Killing horizon is , where is the Kerr horizon angular velocity. At a crossing of the future event horizon, the scalar product of a future-directed causal vector with a future-directed null vector is nonpositive. For example, in a local orthonormal frame, with and , while ; hence . ThereforeThis is a local causal restriction, so it applies also to an extremal Kerr black hole. A massive fragment crossing a regular future event horizon has a strict inequality; equality is the reversible limiting case, with causal four-momentum approaching the generator direction.
The Penrose process exploits the fact that becomes spacelike in the Kerr ergoregion, allowing future-directed fragments with negative Killing energy. For a positive choice of Kerr horizon angular velocity, a captured negative-energy fragment must have sufficiently negative angular momentum to satisfy the inequality. Conservation of energy in the splitting then gives : the escaping fragment extracts rotational energy and the captured fragment reduces the black hole's mass and angular momentum.
For the independent thermodynamic argument, take a subextremal Kerr black hole and a small capture process covered by the Physical-process first law of black-hole mechanics. To first order, , , soThe second law of black-hole mechanics, under its classical null energy condition and regularity hypotheses, gives ; since , this reproduces . The ideal reversible limit has . One should not infer a general finite-capture equality for an extremal black hole by simply substituting : the linearized nonextremal process proof and its differentiability assumptions must first be controlled. The causal proof already establishes the required inequality there without this issue.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 iii Paper 66 4 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Hawking radiation is a prediction of quantum field theory in curved spacetime, not of classical collapse alone. Consider a free massless Klein-Gordon field in the collapse vacuum for Hawking radiation: initially no incoming particles from past null infinity, with the short-distance state regular for freely falling observers through the forming event horizon. At late times use the approximately fixed exterior Schwarzschild metric; neglect backreaction during the observation interval. First set .
The exterior metric has . Introduce the tortoise coordinate and outgoing and ingoing null coordinates,The surface gravity is . The logarithm in makes a late escaping ray spend a long exterior coordinate time close to the event horizon. One of the regular outgoing Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates is proportional to . Smooth propagation backwards through the collapsing body relates this regular coordinate to the incoming coordinate on past null infinity. If labels the last ray able to escape, the late-time Hawking exponential ray map is consequentlyHere the symbol is the outgoing retarded time evaluated on the ray; the first equation is the leading asymptotic relation, with subleading corrections that vanish at late times. The constant depends on collapse history, whereas the exponential rate is determined by the final surface gravity. The relation follows from a nondegenerate Killing horizon; a linear ray map would not have the same effect.
An outgoing positive-frequency mode at future null infinity behaves as , where is measured with respect to the asymptotic stationary time. In the near-horizon geometric optics approximation its backward-propagated form on past null infinity isThis is not purely positive frequency in . Its decomposition into incoming positive-frequency modes and their complex conjugates is a Bogoliubov transformation:The coefficients follow from the Klein-Gordon inner product, or equivalently from the Fourier transform with the indicated flux normalization. Writing and , the two Fourier integrals, after a convergence regulator, areThe equality is the defining integral of the Gamma function, continued to these arguments from the right half-plane. Up to phases of unit modulus, is and is . Taking on the principal branches, the arguments of tend to . Thus and , giving the thermal ratio of Hawking Bogoliubov coefficientsIn particular, using ,The collapse-dependent phases and disappear from the ratio. The canonical identities for a bosonic Bogoliubov transformation state that the positive-frequency norm minus the negative-frequency norm is one for a normalized outgoing mode. Combining that identity with the thermal ratio yields the late-time mean occupationThese are the Bose-Einstein distribution and the Hawking temperature. Strictly, monochromatic modes have delta-function normalization, and contains the infinite-duration divergence . Normalized wave packets with a finite frequency band and a finite retarded-time window remove this artifact. For sufficiently late packets the occupation is the frequency average of the displayed thermal factor, tending to it for a narrow band. Fermionic fields instead give the corresponding denominator because their canonical normalization uses anticommutators.
Four-dimensional propagation adds an important qualification to the word thermal. Separation of the massless Klein-Gordon equation into spherical harmonics gives an exterior radial scattering potentialOnly a fraction of the outgoing mode is transmitted to future null infinity; this is the greybody factor. The scalar particle flux there isThe factor counts the angular modes, and multiplication by gives the spectral energy flux. An observer at infinity therefore receives an outgoing thermal population filtered by curvature scattering, rather than an exact unfiltered blackbody spectrum. In physical units, for mass ,There is no incoming thermal bath in the collapse vacuum for Hawking radiation. The outgoing flux has positive Killing energy; its counterpart inside the event horizon can carry negative Killing energy. Including the expectation value of the stress-energy tensor in the gravitational evolution allows the mass to decrease. The fixed-background derivation describes the slowly evolving semiclassical regime and does not determine the endpoint of evaporation. Quantum expectation values need not satisfy the classical null energy condition, so this loss of area is not a contradiction of the classical second law of black-hole mechanics. The essential late-time universality is the combination of a regular initial quantum state and the exponential redshift at the newly formed event horizon.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2009 iii Paper 54 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Let , with , and let a dot denote differentiation with respect to an affine parameter . The geodesic Lagrangian is one half the squared tangent norm. Its Euler–Lagrange equations givewhere in these formulas only. The constants from time translation and axial rotation areThey are the Killing energy and axial angular momentum per chosen affine normalization. A rescaling of rescales both, while their ratio is invariant. More generally the rotational Killing fields conserve the full angular-momentum vector: differentiating any Killing contraction along an affine geodesic gives . Thus its direction can be chosen as the polar axis.
Equivalently rotate the initial position and angular tangent into one plane through the centre. The angular geodesic equation then has initial data , , for which solves the equation identically. Uniqueness keeps the geodesic in that plane. A radial geodesic has no distinguished orbital plane but can be placed in any equatorial plane. Hence no physical restriction is imposed by setting .
Write in that plane. For a null geodesic the tangent norm vanishes, givingThe full radial equation also gives . These equations are used away from the coordinate singularity ; the geodesics themselves extend across the horizon in regular coordinates. For radial rays , and azimuth is not an orbit parameter.
For the nonradial case , set and now use a prime for . Since , the null first integral becomesHere is the signed impact parameter; its magnitude is the ordinary positive impact parameter for an exterior future-directed ray. The second-order orbit equation is . It follows from the radial geodesic equation and therefore holds even where ; differentiation of the squared first integral alone would not establish a circular solution at a turning point.
A finite circular photon orbit has and nonzero . Hence , while the first integral fixes :The null radial potential has second derivative there, so the photon sphere is unstable. The formal root lies at infinite radius, not a finite orbit. Radial null generators of the event horizon have fixed angles and are not circular photon orbits.
At the critical impact parameter the first integral factors asChoose the oriented branch . Put ; then . The functionsatisfies by direct differentiation. Integrating givesThis establishes the displayed family as actual critical-impact-parameter geodesics. Reversing the azimuthal orientation gives the complementary parametrization.
To expose the geometry, put . Solving for the positive square root givesFor physical this branch uses , with the upper endpoint corresponding to infinite radius. As ,Thus the critical photon orbits of Schwarzschild spacetime wind around the photon circle infinitely many times with an exponentially shrinking radial displacement. For the approach is from outside ; for it is from inside; for the orbit is the circle itself. Increasing along the chosen orientation sends the positive branch outward toward infinity and the negative branch inward, through the horizon toward the singularity. The limiting description at concerns the asymptotic photon sphere rather than a finite-angle radial turning point.



