When Black Holes Meet Kaluza-Klein Bubbles

TL;DR

This paper investigates novel solutions in five-dimensional Kaluza-Klein theory, revealing complex interactions between black holes and bubbles, including stable configurations and unusual horizon topologies.

Contribution

It introduces exact solutions showing black holes and bubbles coexisting in static equilibrium, with new phenomena like arbitrarily large black holes and non-merging black hole pairs.

Findings

Black holes with S^3 topology can be arbitrarily large in bubble backgrounds.

Expanding de Sitter bubbles can coexist with black holes or strings, never reaching null infinity.

Two black holes can remain in static equilibrium without merging.

Abstract

We explore the physical consequences of a recently discovered class of exact solutions to five dimensional Kaluza-Klein theory. We find a number of surprising features including: (1) In the presence of a Kaluza-Klein bubble, there are arbitrarily large black holes with topology S^3. (2) In the presence of a black hole or a black string, there are expanding bubbles (with de Sitter geometry) which never reach null infinity. (3) A bubble can hold two black holes of arbitrary size in static equilibrium. In particular, two large black holes can be close together without merging to form a single black hole.