Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Black holes are some of the most fascinating objects known to science. Originally predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, there is now compelling observational evidence for their existence as real objects and not just theoretical constructs. Indeed they are linked to some of the most dramatic astrophysical phenomena including super-novae and active galactic nuclei. Physical processes involving black holes (such as binary inspirals and gravitational collapse) are widely expected to be some of the brightest sources of gravitational waves and based on these expectations, gravitational wave observatories have been built all over the world. The classical theory of black holes was developed in the 1960s and 70s, is mathematically elegant, and is the foundation for our theories of the above mentioned phenomena. However as time has passed it has become more and more clear that while it gives an excellent description of non-evolving black holes it does not do nearly so good a job for dynamically evolving ones. My work focuses on the theory of dynamical black holes and ranges from horizons that are nearly in equilibrium with their surroundings to extremely dramatic evolutions such as when two black holes collide and merge. Each of these has their own challenge. For example given the massive distortion of the flow of time near to any black hole, in what sense can one ever be said to be slowly evolving? Conversely for the other extreme of possible behaviours, black hole boundaries sometimes appear to jump discontinuously but recent research has shown that this may not be the case and instead horizons may only be created or destroyed in conjunction with a kind of anti-horizon. During the tenure of this grant I will study these various types of evolution and their fascinating theory not only for its own sake but also to develop tools that can be used to understand their physics as observed both in reality and in computer simulations.