2005/11/30 by Erik Schnetter, B. Krishnan, Badri Krishnan · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.73.021502
published as Phys.Rev. D73 (2006) 021502(R) · 4 pages, 3 figures; v2: minor modifications; v3: clarified conclusions
openalex publication_date 2006/01/19 · arxiv created 2006/01/20 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
Marginally trapped surfaces (MTSs) are commonly used in numerical relativity to locate black holes. For dynamical black holes, it is not known generally if this procedure is sufficiently reliable. Even for Schwarzschild black holes, Wald and Iyer constructed foliations which come arbitrarily close to the singularity but do not contain any MTSs. In this paper, we review the Wald-Iyer construction, discuss some implications for numerical relativity, and generalize to the well-known Vaidya spacetime describing spherically symmetric collapse of null dust. In the Vaidya spacetime, we numerically locate non spherically symmetric trapped surfaces which extend outside the standard spherically symmetric trapping horizon. This shows that MTSs are common in this spacetime and that the event horizon is the most likely candidate for the boundary of the trapped region.