Black holes in non-local gravity

Abstract

In this chapter we present a status report of black hole-like solutions in non-local theories of gravity in which the Lagrangians are at least quadratic in curvature and contain specific non-polynomial (i.e., non-local) operators. In the absence of exact black hole solutions valid in the whole spacetime, most of the literature on this topic focus on approximate and simplified equations of motion, which could provide insights on the full non-linear solutions. Therefore, the largest part of this chapter is devoted to the linear approximation. We present results on stationary metric solutions (including both static and rotating cases) and dynamical spacetimes describing the formation of non-rotating mini black holes by the collapse of null shells. Non-local effects can regularize the curvature singularities in both scenarios and, in the dynamical case, there exists a mass gap below which the formation of an apparent horizon can be avoided. In the final part we discuss interesting attempts towards finding non-linear black hole solutions in non-local gravity. Throughout this chapter, instead of focusing on a particular non-local model, we present results valid for large classes of theories (to a feasible extent). This more general approach allows the comparison of similarities and differences of the various types of non-local gravity models.