Black Hole Student Meetings

last updated: 10.42 AM, Dec 11, 2019

what Students with some prior exposure to special relativity and general relativity meet once a week to systematically discuss topics in black hole physics. Additional topics that can be discussed can be found further below under Suggestions for further meetings. Input welcome!
when weekly, 1.30pm, 4-285 CCIS
contact Jens Boos (boos@ualberta.ca)
URL http://www.spintwo.net/Courses/Black-Hole-Student-Meetings/

Past meetings

  1. 2019-09-25: overview and introduction [01]
    2019-10-02: no meeting
  2. 2019-10-09: light rays in Minkowski space, Penrose diagrams [01, 02, 03]
  3. 2019-10-16: Rindler coordinates, acceleration horizons, and homogeneous gravitational fields [01, 02]
  4. 2019-10-23: the Schwarzschild black hole: horizon, singularity, and the Penrose diagram [01, 02]
  5. 2019-10-30: near-horizon geometry, null generators, and surface gravity [01, 02, 03]
  6. 2019-11-06: motion of a massive particle around a Schwarzschild black hole [01, 02, Mathematica notebook]
  7. 2019-11-13: gravitational collapse and black hole formation [01, 02]
  8. 2019-11-20: Hawking radiation [01, 02, 03]
    2019-11-27: no meeting
  9. 2019-12-04: the black hole information loss paradox (based on Refs. [2, 3]) [01, 02]
  10. 2019-12-11: analog black holes (see Refs. [4, 5, 6]) [01, 02]

Suggestions for further meetings

  1. What is the difference between a black hole and a heavy object?
  2. What is black hole entropy?
  3. The information loss paradox
  4. Asymptotic charges
  5. Black holes beyond Einstein
  6. ...

Literature

  1. V. P. Frolov and A. Zelnikov, Introduction to Black Hole Physics (Oxford University Press, 2011). E-Book available for all U of A students here.
  2. W. G. Unruh and W. M. Wald, “Information Loss,” Rept. Prog. Phys. 80 (2017) no.9, 092002; arXiv:1703.02140.
  3. G. Compère, “Are quantum corrections on horizon scale physically motivated?,” arXiv:1902.04504.
  4. W. G. Unruh, “Experimental black hole evaporation?,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 46 (1981) 1351.
  5. M. Visser, “Acoustic black holes: Horizons, ergospheres, and Hawking radiation,” Class. Quant. Grav. 15 (1998) 1767; arXiv:gr-qc/9712010.
  6. O. Lahav et al., “Realization of a Sonic Black Hole Analog in a Bose-Einstein Condensate,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 105 (2010) 240401; arXiv:0906.1337 [cond-mat].