A black hole uniqueness theorem.

A black hole uniqueness theorem.

Tue, 02/06/2009
12:00 		Spyridon Alexakis (MIT) Relativity Seminar Add to calendar L3
A black hole uniqueness theorem.
I will discuss recent joint work with A. Ionescu and S. Klainerman on the black hole uniqueness problem. A classical result of Hawking (building on earlier work of Carter and Robinson) asserts that any vacuum, stationary black hole exterior region must be isometric to the Kerr exterior, under the restrictive assumption that the space-time metric should be analytic in the entire exterior region. We prove that Hawking's theorem remains valid without the assumption of analyticity, for black hole exteriors which are apriori assumed to be "close" to the Kerr exterior solution in a very precise sense. Our method of proof relies on certain geometric Carleman-type estimates for the wave operator.