For , an ingoing chart with has metric . In its future interior, is future timelike, so every future causal curve decreases and cannot reach future null infinity. The singularity is spacelike. A Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates extension has the same qualitative Penrose diagram as Schwarzschild spacetime, with two exterior regions, a future black-hole interior and a past white hole interior. The past interior has the same radial interval but is not a black hole region; specifying the radial interval alone does not identify the future component. For , the physical exterior has everywhere and outgoing null rays escape from arbitrarily near a timelike naked singularity.
Choose Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates with the right exterior at and . The ingoing Painlevé–Gullstrand coordinates cover that exterior and the future black-hole region , together with their common future horizon. They exclude the other exterior, the white hole, the bifurcation sphere and the singularity. Indeed , with and ; the difference is finite at , whereas requires infinite coordinate time.
Kruskal diagram 2026-10-14
This radial spacetime diagram uses Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates to display both exteriors, the black hole and the white hole of maximally extended Schwarzschild spacetime. Each point represents a symmetry two-sphere. Radial null geodesics have slopes in the displayed coordinates; the horizons are and the singularities satisfy in the usual normalization. A further compactification gives the corresponding Penrose diagram.
Kruskal spacetime 2026-10-06
The Kruskal spacetime is the maximal analytic extension of the positive-mass vacuum Schwarzschild spacetime. It contains two exterior regions, a black hole, and a white hole. Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates remove both horizon coordinate singularities, while remains a curvature singularity.
In Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates, every future-directed radial causal curve has nondecreasing and . The right exterior has , while the left has . No future-directed causal curve can travel between the exteriors because it would have to decrease one null coordinate. The spatial bridge on a time-symmetric slice is therefore not a traversable passage.
Null coordinate Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-14
A null coordinate is a coordinate function whose gradient is null, . Its level sets are null hypersurfaces. Pairs of such coordinates straighten radial null directions in two-dimensional orbit metrics; a monotone reparametrization of either function preserves its null level sets. Examples include the retarded and advanced null coordinates and the radial Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates.
Take and write . Integrating gives the Schwarzschild tortoise coordinate
The advanced and retarded Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates are respectively and . Substituting or gives
Both 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 coordinates
Their product and the extended metric are
Indeed 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 .
Figure 1.
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.
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 is
It 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 give
The 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:
Then
For 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 have
The 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.
Figure 1.
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.
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 consequently
Here 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 is
This 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, are
The 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 coefficients
In 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 occupation
These 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 potential
Only a fraction of the outgoing mode is transmitted to future null infinity; this is the greybody factor. The scalar particle flux there is
The 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.
Set . Since , the integrand defining the tortoise coordinate has a simple pole:
where is analytic near . Define the Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates in the right exterior by and . Then
The right-hand side has positive nonzero derivative at . Continuing this relation analytically, rather than retaining an absolute value, makes an analytic function of through both signs. The Kruskal extension across a simple static horizon has metric
Its radial coefficient tends to , finite and nonzero, while . Therefore both null surfaces and are regular horizon branches, intersecting at a smooth two-sphere .
The stationary Killing vector field becomes
It is null, tangent and normal on each horizon branch and vanishes on their intersection. This proves that is a bifurcate Killing horizon, with bifurcation surface of area . The exponential definitions specify one exterior; allowing all signs of supplies the remaining quadrants of the extension.
There is only one zero of , at , and the Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates give four quadrants. Both exterior quadrants have , while the future and past interior quadrants have . The tortoise coordinate is finite at : for , , and for it is . Throughout each interior , so constant- hypersurfaces are spacelike. The assumed curvature singularity at therefore forms a spacelike future boundary in the black-hole region and a spacelike past boundary in the white-hole region. At infinity, and , giving two standard asymptotically flat ends.
The resulting Penrose diagram is the same four-region causal diagram as the maximal Schwarzschild spacetime:
Figure 1.
Maximal extension of the charged single-horizon geometry, with two exteriors, a black hole, a white hole and spacelike singularities
. Details.
Each exterior has its own past null infinity, future null infinity, spatial infinity and timelike infinities. The future and past event horizons intersect on the bifurcation surface. The diagram describes the eternal analytic solution; a spacetime formed by collapse need not contain its white-hole region or second exterior.
Unlike a nonextreme Reissner-Nordstrom black hole, this electrically charged solution has one horizon and spacelike singularities, with no inner Cauchy horizon. A nonextreme Reissner-Nordstrom solution has two distinct horizons, including an inner Cauchy horizon, and a timelike singularity; its ideal maximal extension contains an infinite sequence of exterior and interior blocks. Charge by itself does not determine this causal structure: the metric and field equations of the gravitational theory matter.
Assume and use geometric units. The stationary Killing vector field gives the conserved Killing energy . For radial motion, normalization of the four-velocity gives . Combining these identities yields
At rest at infinity, and , so . Choose the inward branch . Its proper time from the Schwarzschild event horizon to the curvature singularity is
In ordinary units this is . The endpoint is not a regular centre of the spacetime. This is the Schwarzschild horizon-to-singularity proper time for fall from infinity, rather than a universal time for all infall energies.
For this geodesic congruence, set . Its four-velocity and metric dual are
The right side is an exact one-form because depends only on . Thus , with free-fall proper time in Schwarzschild spacetime determined by
Indeed , so this scalar advances by the actual proper time on every member of the infalling geodesic congruence, with a synchronized choice of additive offsets.
Substitution of in the Schwarzschild metric gives
Using , the Painlevé–Gullstrand coordinates therefore have
All coefficients are finite at ; the determinant of the block is . Hence the horizon is a coordinate singularity of Schwarzschild time, not a degeneracy of the metric. The new spatial slices have , the flat Euclidean metric, and makes their normals the freely falling four-velocities. By contrast, the curvature scalar diverges at ; this genuine singularity is not removed.
For Ingoing Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates, use with , for example . Then
Both constructions cross the future horizon. Their time functions have different meanings: is an ingoing null hypersurface, whereas is a flat spacelike hypersurface orthogonal to the infallers. Thus the former is adapted to ingoing null geodesics, and the latter to a timelike free-fall clock congruence.
For the Kruskal diagram, choose Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates with , in the right exterior and extend them across its horizon. They obey
The four regions of Kruskal spacetime are I, the right exterior ; II, the future black hole ; III, the other exterior ; and IV, the past white hole . The null axes are horizons, their intersection is the bifurcation two-sphere, and the spacelike boundaries are the future and past curvature singularities. A point in this radial diagram represents a symmetry two-sphere.
Figure 1.
Kruskal extension with both exteriors, black hole and white hole; the ingoing Painlevé-Gullstrand domain is shaded blue
. Details.
The domain of the ingoing Painleve-Gullstrand chart is region I together with region II and their common future horizon. More precisely, it is , , or with finite . To verify the boundary rather than infer it from the locally regular metric, put and write
This follows by subtracting from the preceding radial primitive, and is finite at . Thus throughout the chart. Conversely every point with and gives a finite . The past horizon , the bifurcation sphere, region III and region IV are absent. Reversing the sign of the radial term produces the outgoing chart through the white hole instead.
Use geometrized units and metric signature , with . In the exterior of Schwarzschild spacetime, put . The Schwarzschild tortoise coordinate satisfies
The retarded and advanced null coordinates and then give . The logarithmic divergence of suggests exponentiating these null coordinates. In the right exterior define the Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates
Their product eliminates :
Since and , the Schwarzschild metric becomes
Here is an implicitly defined function of . The derivative of the right side with respect to is , which is nonzero at . The inverse function theorem therefore makes smooth across that surface, and the coefficient of tends to . Thus the Schwarzschild event horizon is a coordinate singularity of the original chart, while this Lorentzian metric remains regular there.
Extend the Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates to all real with . The signs give two exterior regions, and , a future black hole region , and a past white hole region . The event horizons are or , intersecting at the bifurcation surface. The boundary has and is a genuine Schwarzschild singularity, as the Kretschmann scalar diverges there.
Finally, and give and a radial metric proportional to . Hence radial null geodesics have slopes , the event horizons are , and the singular boundaries are . This constructs the maximal Kruskal extension; a black hole produced by collapse need not contain the second exterior or the white hole of that eternal extension.
Write the Kruskal–Szekeres plane with horizontal and vertical. The relation
shows that constant- curves are hyperbolae.
For , their right and left exterior branches satisfy
For , their future and past interior branches satisfy
The event horizons are the null diagonals
and the curvature singularities are the spacelike hyperbolae
in the normalization stated in the question.
Constant Schwarzschild- curves are straight rays through the origin. In the exteriors their slopes obey
while in the interiors
Thus the qualitative diagram is the usual four-region Kruskal diagram: two exterior wedges separated from black-hole and white-hole interiors by the two null horizons, with spacelike singularities bounding the interior wedges.
For the Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates of a positive-mass Schwarzschild spacetime, . The displayed conformal compactification makes radial null geodesics lines of slope . The Killing horizons are , and the spacelike curvature singularities lie at , with . Two asymptotically flat exterior regions each have past null infinity, null infinity to the future, timelike infinity and spacelike infinity. The two exterior regions cannot communicate by any causal curve; future-directed curves that cross a future horizon instead end at the black-hole singularity.