Speaker
Greg Galloway
(Miami)
Description
A basic result in the theory of black holes is
Hawking's theorem on the topology of black holes, which asserts
that cross sections of the event horizon in (3+1)-dimensional
asymptotically flat stationary black hole spacetimes obeying the
dominant energy condition are topologically 2-spheres. Recent
interest and developments in the study of higher dimensional
black holes has drawn attention to the question of what are the
allowable black hole topologies in higher dimensions. We have
addressed this question in two recent papers, the first with
Rick Schoen, resulting in a natural generalization of Hawking's
theorem to higher dimensions. In this talk we discuss these
works and some further related developments. The results we
describe are based on properties of marginally outer trapped
surfaces, which are natural spacetime analogues of minimal
surfaces, and which form the focus of our talk.
