Black Hole Physics

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Black hole existence is one of the most exciting predictions of the Einstein's theory of gravity. Astrophysical observations strongly support the existence of stellar mass black holes as well as supermassive black holes in the center of many galaxies. Black holes play an important role in theoretical physics as probes of new theoretical ideas and models (such as string theory, brane worlds, large extra dimensions). For quite a long time black holes have been in the focus of interests of the both scientific and public communities. The aim of the project is to gain a better understanding of the properties of spacetime and matter in the strong gravitational field of black holes. The Project includes (i) study of higher dimensional black holes and (ii) study of physical effects in the strong gravitational field of astrophysical black holes. These two directions of research in fact are connected, and require similar tools and methods. In part (i) I shall try to understand which of the properties of four dimensional black holes are generic and valid in any number of dimensions, and which are specific for four dimensions only. The key role in this study will be played by a gepmetric object, recently discovered in our group, Principal Conformal Killing-Yano Tensor, which encodes all the information about the symmetries and other important geometric properties of rotating black holes in any number of spacetime dimensions. It allows one to explain many `miraculous' properties of such black holes. My aim is to study how far one can generalize this method to study non-vacuum black holes, black holes in supergravity, and black holes with non-spherical topology of the horizon. The second direction of my research (ii) is focused on studying physical effects in the close vicinity of black holes which can be used as additional marks for the identification of astrophysical black holes. I would also like to understand the role of the magnetic field and particle collisions in the processes of the energy extraction from rotating black holes. By solving the concrete problems formulated in the Proposal I hope to contribute to our understanding of black holes, their role in the universe, and their special role in theoretical physics.