Stability of spherically symmetric, charged black holes and multipole moments for stationary systems

Thesis/Dissertation · Sat Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1983

OSTI ID:6913942

Gursel, H Y

This dissertation is written in two parts. Part I deals with the question of stability of a spherically symmetric, charged black hole against scalar, electromagnetic, and gravitational perturbations. It consists of two papers written in collaboration with Igor D. Novikov, Vernon D. Sandberg and A.A. Starobinsky. In these papers the dynamical evolution of these perturbations on the interior of a Reissner-Nordstrom black hole is described. The instability of the hole's Cauchy horizon is discussed in detail in terms of the energy densities of the test fields as measured by a freely falling observer approaching the Cauchy horizon. It is concluded that the Cauchy horizon of the analytically extended Reissner-Nordstrom solution is highly unstable and not a physical feature of a realistic gravitational collapse. Part II of this dissertation addresses two problems closely connected with multipole structure of stationary, asymptotically flat spacetimes. It consists of two papers written in collaboration with Kip S. Thorne. The first one shows the equivalence of the moments defined by Kip S. Thorne and the moments defined by Robert Geroch and Richard Hansen. The second proves a conjecture by Kip S. Thorne: In the limit of ''slow'' motion, general relativistic gravity produces no changes whatsoever in the classical Euler equations of rigid body motion. This conjecture is proved by giving an algorithm for generating rigidly rotating solutions of Einstein's equation from nonrotating, static solutions.

• Research Organization: California Inst. of Tech., Pasadena (USA)
• OSTI ID: 6913942
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

640102* -- Astrophysics & Cosmology-- Stars & Quasi-Stellar
Radio & X-Ray Sources
657003 -- Theoretical & Mathematical Physics-- Relativity & Gravitation
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
BLACK HOLES
DISTURBANCES
EINSTEIN FIELD EQUATIONS
EQUATIONS
FIELD EQUATIONS
FIELD THEORIES
GENERAL RELATIVITY THEORY
GRAVITATION
MOTION
MULTIPOLES
SPACE-TIME
STABILITY