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arXiv · 1706.03430

Gravitational shockwaves on rotating black holes

Yoni BenTov·Joe Swearngin
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Abstract

We present an exact solution of Einstein's equation that describes the gravitational shockwave of a massless particle on the horizon of a Kerr-Newman black hole. The backreacted metric is of the generalized Kerr-Schild form and is Type II in the Petrov classification. We show that if the background frame is aligned with shear-free null geodesics, and if the background Ricci tensor satisfies a simple condition, then all nonlinearities in the perturbation will drop out of the curvature scalars. We make heavy use of the method of spin coefficients (the Newman-Penrose formalism) in its compacted form (the Geroch-Held-Penrose formalism).

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Yoni BenTov, Joe Swearngin. 2017-06-12. Gravitational shockwaves on rotating black holes. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10714-019-2512-7

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