General Relativity/Reissner-Nordström black hole

<General Relativity

Reissner-Nordström black hole is a black hole that carries electric charge Q, no angular momentum, and mass M. General properties of such a black hole are described in the article charged black hole.

It is described by the electric field of a point-like charged particle, and especially by the Reissner-Nordström metric that generalizes the Schwarzschild metric of an electrically neutral black hole:

ds^2=-\left(1-\frac{2M}{r}+\frac{Q^2}{r^2}\right)dt^2 + \left(1-\frac{2M}{r}+\frac{Q^2}{r^2}\right)^{-1} dr^2 +r^2 d\Omega^2

where we have used units with the speed of light and the gravitational constant equal to one (c=G=1) and where the angular part of the metric is

d\Omega^2 \equiv d\theta^2 +\sin^2 \theta\cdot d\phi^2

The electromagnetic potential is

A = -\frac{Q}{r}dt.

While the charged black holes with |Q| < M (especially with |Q| << M) are similar to the Schwarzschild black hole, they have two horizons: the event horizon and an internal Cauchy horizon. The horizons are located at r = r_\pm := M \pm \sqrt{M^2-Q^2}. These horizons merge for |Q|=M which is the case of an extremal black hole.

Last modified on 25 August 2009, at 03:37