Conserved scalar-field energy in a static spacetime Created 2026-09-28 Updated 2026-10-07
The stress-energy current from a Killing vector associated with the static time translation gives a positive conserved energy for a massive real scalar. Its hypersurface independence follows from current conservation and the divergence theorem.
The stress-energy tensor is already first order, so its energy flux can be evaluated on the unperturbed Schwarzschild event horizon , with the infinity-normalized Killing vector field . On this background , and hence
The conserved stress-energy current from a Killing vector is . Its radial component is negative, so the positive inward energy flux is . Using the directed null-surface measure gives
The initial and final event horizon areas are and . Thus . With Schwarzschild surface gravity , the Physical-process first law of black-hole mechanics follows:
The flux is Killing energy, including gravitational redshift, rather than the energy measured by a sequence of static observers arbitrarily close to the event horizon.
Use , the Einstein field equations with zero cosmological constant, and metric signature . Write for the differential one-form dual to the axial Killing vector field. To fix the sign of the volume formula, use the component Hodge star operator convention and . The Killing equation gives , and its contracted curvature identity gives
To see the curvature step, tracing the Killing equation gives . The second covariant derivative of a Killing vector then gives , while commuting the covariant derivatives gives . Subtracting these two terms is precisely above. The component Hodge star operator converts this divergence to with the displayed minus sign.
In a vacuum spacetime region , so . If and are enclosing spacelike submanifolds in the same homology class bounding a vacuum three-dimensional region , Stokes theorem yields
Thus the Komar angular momentum is independent of the enclosing vacuum spacelike two-manifold, provided the surfaces have the same orientation and enclose the same sources and inner boundaries. The vacuum region need not be stationary: an axial Killing vector field suffices.
For a regular filling hypersurface with , the Einstein field equations give
The pullback of to vanishes because is tangent to : the dual three-form measures the normal component, which is zero. Therefore
This is the stress-energy current from a Killing vector integrated over the slice, with the signs fixed by the stated Hodge star operator convention.
There is a necessary boundary qualification omitted from the printed formulation. If the slice has inner boundaries , orient them so . The actual Komar angular momentum with inner boundaries identity is
For a vacuum Kerr black hole, on the exterior slice but ; its horizon supplies precisely the inner boundary contribution. Thus the matter-only formula is false for arbitrary exterior slices. It is valid when a nonsingular filling with no inner boundaries exists, or when all omitted inner charges vanish. The Komar angular momentum independence likewise concerns homologous surfaces in the same vacuum region, not an unrestricted comparison of differently enclosed objects.
The Physical-process first law for a rotating black hole applies to a small perturbation of a stationary nonextremal vacuum black hole by infalling neutral matter, followed by relaxation to stationarity. Its first-order form is
Here the background horizon generator is , normalized by the unit time translation at infinity, and its surface gravity is constant, , as in the Zeroth law of black-hole mechanics. The formula neglects terms quadratic in the perturbation. Choose the process sufficiently weak that the horizon generators used below have no large caustics, and assume appropriate early and late stationary limits and convergent fluxes.
On the background Killing horizon, choose an affine generator such that ; the bifurcation or early stationary limit corresponds to . The background null expansion and null shear vanish. The null twist is zero because the perturbed event horizon is a null hypersurface. Linearizing the Null Raychaudhuri equation and using the Einstein field equations gives
The expansion squared and shear squared are second order, and the metric-trace part of the Einstein equations vanishes in this null contraction. Future stationarity sets . To first order is the derivative of the fractional area change, so, using the background area element ,
The integration by parts uses , guaranteed by the stated endpoint conditions.
The conserved stress-energy current from a Killing vector gives the absorbed mass and angular momentum, with signs
Consequently
which proves the law. Any other escaping flux must be accounted for separately when identifying these absorbed charges with the changes in the black hole. Electric-charge variations would require the corresponding potential-charge term; they are excluded in this version. The convention in Question 1 is not needed here.
The Physical-process first law for a rotating black hole states that a small flux of matter through an initially and finally stationary horizon obeys
in units . Let be an affinely parametrized horizon tangent with affine parameter on a bifurcation surface. Constancy of the surface gravity from the Zeroth law of black-hole mechanics and Gaussian null coordinates give the horizon generator
To first order about a stationary horizon, the squared expansion and shear in the Null Raychaudhuri equation are second order. The Einstein field equations reduce it to
The final stationary condition gives
Since , reversing the order of integration yields
The stress-energy current from a Killing vector gives the horizon Killing-energy flux
which proves the stated law.
Killing equation is . For the stress-energy current from a Killing vector ,
The first term vanishes on shell, while the second contracts the symmetric tensor with the antisymmetric derivative selected by Killing's equation. Thus .