Maximal hypersurface in a D-dimensional dynamical spacetime

TL;DR

This paper formulates a variational approach to identify maximal hypersurfaces within dynamical, spherically symmetric black hole regions in D-dimensions, introducing Reinhart radii to approximate interior volumes and analyzing their properties.

Contribution

It develops a new variational framework for maximal hypersurfaces in dynamical spacetimes and introduces Reinhart radii as tools for estimating black hole interior volumes.

Findings

Derived equations for maximal hypersurfaces in D-dimensional spacetimes.

Formulated a formula to locate Reinhart radii using coordinate invariants.

Analyzed the existence and properties of Reinhart radii in various black hole scenarios.

Abstract

In this article, we set up a variational problem to arrive at the equation of the maximal hypersurface in the interior of a spherically symmetric evolving trapped region. In the first part of the article, we present the Lagrangian and the corresponding Euler-Lagrange equations that maximize the interior volume of a trapped region that is formed dynamically due to infalling matter in D-dimensions, with and without the cosmological constant. In the second part, we explore the properties of special radii, which we call Reinhart radii, that play a crucial role in approximating the maximal interior volume of a black hole. We derive a formula to locate these Reinhart radii in terms of coordinate invariants like area radius, principle values of the energy-momentum tensor, Misner-Sharp mass, and cosmological constant. Based on this formula, we estimate the location of Reinhart radii in various scenarios: (a) the case of static BTZ black holes in (2 + 1)-dimensions and for the Schwarzschild, Schwarzschild-de Sitter, and Schwarzschild-anti-de Sitter black holes in D-dimensions. We plot the location of the Reinhart radii in relation to the event horizon and cosmological horizon in a static D-dimensional scenario, (b) cosmological case: we prove that these Reinhart radii do not exist for homogeneous evolving dust for the zero and negative cosmological constant but exist in the presence of positive cosmological constant when the scale factor is greater than a critical value. We also show the relation between these Reinhart radii and Kodama vectors.