Square Peg in a Circular Hole: Choosing the Right Ansatz for Isolated Black Holes in Generic Gravitational Theories

2021/03/31 by Yiqi Xie, Jun Zhang, Hector O. Silva +4 · 30 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Ansatz #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Black hole (networking) #Classical mechanics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #General relativity #Geometry #Gravitation #Limit (mathematics) #Mathematical analysis #Mathematical physics #Mathematics #Metric (unit) #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Spacetime #Square (algebra) #Theoretical physics #astro-ph.HE #gr-qc #hep-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.126.241104

published in Physical Review Letters 126(24), 241104 (American Physical Society) · 7+5 pages, 1 figure, text and references updated, v2 matches version published in PRL

openalex publication_date 2021/06/17 · arxiv created 2021/06/18 · arxiv updated 2021/06/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06

Abstract

The metric of a spacetime can be greatly simplified if the spacetime is circular. We prove that in generic effective theories of gravity, the spacetime of a stationary, axisymmetric, and asymptotically flat solution must be circular if the solution can be obtained perturbatively from a solution in the general relativity limit. This result applies to a broad class of gravitational theories that include arbitrary scalars and vectors in their light sector, so long as their nonstandard kinetic terms and nonmininal couplings to gravity are treated perturbatively.

Citations

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