More about Birkhoff's Invariant and Thorne's Hoop Conjecture for Horizons

Abstract

A recent precise formulation of the hoop conjecture in four spacetime dimensions is that the Birkhoff invariant $β$ (the least maximal length of any sweepout or foliation by circles) of an apparent horizon of energy $E$ and area $A$ should satisfy $β\le 4 πE$. This conjecture together with the Cosmic Censorship or Isoperimetric inequality implies that the length $\ell$ of the shortest non-trivial closed geodesic satisfies $\ell^2 \le πA$. We have tested these conjectures on the horizons of all four-charged rotating black hole solutions of ungauged supergravity theories and find that they always hold. They continue to hold in the the presence of a negative cosmological constant, and for multi-charged rotating solutions in gauged supergravity. Surprisingly, they also hold for the Ernst-Wild static black holes immersed in a magnetic field, which are asymptotic to the Melvin solution. In five spacetime dimensions we define $β$ as the least maximal area of all sweepouts of the horizon by two-dimensional tori, and find in all cases examined that $ β(g) \le \frac{16 π}{3} E$, which we conjecture holds quiet generally for apparent horizons. In even spacetime dimensions $D=2N+2$, we find that for sweepouts by the product $S^1 \times S^{D-4}$, $β$ is bounded from above by a certain dimension-dependent multiple of the energy $E$. We also find that $\ell^{D-2}$ is bounded from above by a certain dimension-dependent multiple of the horizon area $A$. Finally, we show that $\ell^{D-3}$ is bounded from above by a certain dimension-dependent multiple of the energy, for all Kerr-AdS black holes.

25 pages