Speaker
Peter Hintz, ETH Zürich
Abstract
Suppose we are given a solution (M,g) of the Einstein vacuum equations. Given a timelike geodesic in M, I will explain how to construct a solution g_\epsilon of the Einstein vacuum equations which is approximately equal to g far from the geodesic but near any point along the geodesic approximately equal to the metric of a Kerr black hole with mass \epsilon. As an application, we can construct spacetimes which describe the merger of a very light black hole with a unit mass black hole, followed by the relaxation of the resulting single black hole to its equilibrium state.