Lightlike limit of the boosted Kerr black holes in higher-dimensional spacetimes

TL;DR

This paper develops a method to derive the gravitational field of high-energy, lightlike Kerr black holes in higher-dimensional spacetimes, which is relevant for particle collision scenarios in brane world models.

Contribution

It introduces an ambiguity-free boosting method for stationary metrics in higher dimensions and constructs explicit lightlike Kerr black hole solutions.

Findings

Analytic construction of lightlike Kerr black hole metrics

Method avoids ambiguities present in four-dimensional cases

Implications for black hole production in high-energy collisions

Abstract

Deriving the gravitational field of the high-energy objects is an important theme because the black holes might be produced in particle collisions in the brane world scenario. In this paper, we develop a method for boosting the metric of the stationary objects and taking the lightlike limit in higher-dimensional spacetimes, using the Kerr black hole as one example. We analytically construct the metric of lightlike Kerr black holes and find that this method contains no ambiguity in contrast to the four-dimensional case. We discuss the possible implications of our results in the brane world context.