Yichen Luo (Western University)

Title: Three Pillars of Black Hole's Reality
Abstract: Theories often suggest the existence of new entities with ambiguous status: are they candidates for physical reality, or artifacts of the mathematics? Here we will focus on how three main lines of research in general relativity have addressed this question with regard to black holes: the study of exact solutions, causal / topological work leading to the singularity theorems, and initial value formulations. Our aim is to analyze how each of these approaches address different questions about the reality of black holes, to demonstrate how they differ in their associated methodologies including their scopes and limits, and to show how the different lines of inquiry relate to one another. Finally, we will conclude by returning to the general question: what are desiderata for establishing the reality, in this sense, of theoretical entities?

#blackholes #generalrelativity #exactsolutions #singularitytheorems #initialvalueformulation