Monthly Notices is one of the three largest general primary astronomical research publications. It is an international journal, published by the Royal Astronomical Society. This article 1 describes its publication policy and practice.

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

We review black-hole solutions of higher-dimensional vacuum gravity and higher-dimensional supergravity theories. The discussion of vacuum gravity is pedagogical, with detailed reviews of Myers-Perry solutions, black rings, and solution-generating techniques. We discuss black-hole solutions of maximal supergravity theories, including black holes in anti-de Sitter space. General results and open problems are discussed throughout.

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Black Holes in Higher Dimensions

Over the past three decades, black holes have played an important role in quantum gravity, mathematical physics, numerical relativity and gravitational wave phenomenology. However, conceptual settings and mathematical models used to discuss them have varied considerably from one area to another. Over the last five years a new, quasi-local framework was introduced to analyze diverse facets of black holes in a unified manner. In this framework, evolving black holes are modelled by dynamical horizons and black holes in equilibrium by isolated horizons. We review basic properties of these horizons and summarize applications to mathematical physics, numerical relativity, and quantum gravity. This paradigm has led to significant generalizations of several results in black hole physics. Specifically, it has introduced a more physical setting for black hole thermodynamics and for black hole entropy calculations in quantum gravity, suggested a phenomenological model for hairy black holes, provided novel techniques to extract physics from numerical simulations, and led to new laws governing the dynamics of black holes in exact general relativity.

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Isolated and dynamical horizons and their applications

The $\Lambda$CDM model provides a good fit to a large span of cosmological data but harbors areas of phenomenology. With the improvement of the number and the accuracy of observations, discrepancies among key cosmological parameters of the model have emerged. The most statistically significant tension is the $4-6\sigma$ disagreement between predictions of the Hubble constant $H_0$ by early time probes with $\Lambda$CDM model, and a number of late time, model-independent determinations of $H_0$ from local measurements of distances and redshifts. The high precision and consistency of the data at both ends present strong challenges to the possible solution space and demand a hypothesis with enough rigor to explain multiple observations--whether these invoke new physics, unexpected large-scale structures or multiple, unrelated errors. We present a thorough review of the problem, including a discussion of recent Hubble constant estimates and a summary of the proposed theoretical solutions. Some of the models presented are formally successful, improving the fit to the data in light of their additional degrees of freedom, restoring agreement within $1-2\sigma$ between {\it Planck} 2018, using CMB power spectra data, BAO, Pantheon SN data, and R20, the latest SH0ES Team measurement of the Hubble constant ($H_0 = 73.2 \pm 1.3{\rm\,km\,s^{-1}\,Mpc^{-1}}$ at 68\% confidence level). Reduced tension might not simply come from a change in $H_0$ but also from an increase in its uncertainty due to degeneracy with additional physics, pointing to the need for additional probes. While no specific proposal makes a strong case for being highly likely or far better than all others, solutions involving early or dynamical dark energy, neutrino interactions, interacting cosmologies, primordial magnetic fields, and modified gravity provide the best options until a better alternative comes along.[Abridged]

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6382/ac086d/pdf

In the realm of the Hubble tension - a review of solutions

The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science. S. 211-215

The idea of black-hole lattices as models for the large-scale structure of the universe has been under scrutiny for several decades, and some of the properties of these systems have been elucidated recently in the context of the problem of cosmological backreaction. The complete, three-dimensional and fully relativistic evolution of these system has, however, never been tackled. We explicitly construct the rst of these solutions by numerically integrating Einstein's equation in the case of an eight-black-hole lattice with the topology of S 3 .

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Evolution of a periodic eight-black-hole lattice in numerical relativity

We present the numerical evolution of a family of conformally-flat, infinite, expanding cubic black-hole lattices. We solve for the initial data using an initial-data prescription presented recently, along with a new multigrid solver developed for this purpose. We then apply the standard tools of numerical relativity to calculate the time development of this initial dataset and derive quantities of cosmological relevance, such as the scaling of proper lengths. Similarly to the case of S3 lattices, we find that the length scaling remains close to the analytical solution for Friedmann–Lemaitre–Robertson–Walker cosmologies throughout our simulations, which span a window of about one order of magnitude in the growth of the scale factor. We highlight, however, a number of important departures from the Friedmann–Lemaitre–Robertson–Walker class.

Evolution of a family of expanding cubic black-hole lattices in numerical relativity

We discuss the continuum limit of the initial data for a vacuum, closed cosmological model with black holes as the only sources of the gravitational field. The model we consider is an exact solution of the constraint equations and represents a vacuum universe with a number of black holes placed on a spatial slice of S3 topology considered at the moment of its largest expansion when the black holes are momentary at rest. We explain how and under what conditions the Friedmann–Lemaitre–Robertson–Walker (FLRW) metric arises as the continuum limit when the number of black holes contained in the model goes to infinity. We also discuss the relation between the effective cosmological parameters of the model, inferred from the large scale geometry of the spacetime, and the masses of individual black holes. In particular, we prove an estimate for the difference between the total effective mass of the system and the sum of the masses of all black holes, thus quantifying the effects of the inhomogeneities in the matter distribution or the cosmological backreaction.

Backreaction and continuum limit in a closed universe filled with black holes

Recently, a multidimensional generalization of the isolated horizon framework has been proposed (Lewandowski and Pawlowski 2005 Class. Quantum Grav. 22 1573–98). Therein the geometric description was easily generalized to higher dimensions and the structure of the constraints induced by the Einstein equations was analysed. In particular, the geometric version of the zeroth law of black-hole thermodynamics was proved. In this work, we show how the IH mechanics can be formulated in a dimension-independent fashion and derive the first law of BH thermodynamics for arbitrarily dimensional IH. We also propose a definition of energy for non-rotating horizons.

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Mechanics of multidimensional isolated horizons

The apparent properties of distant objects encode information about the way the light they emit propagates to an observer, and therefore about the curvature of the underlying spacetime. Measuring the relationship between the redshift z and the luminosity distance DL of a standard candle, for example, yields information on the Universe's matter content. In practice, however, in order to decode this information the observer needs to make an assumption about the functional form of the DL(z) relation; in other words, a cosmological model needs to be assumed. In this work, we use numerical-relativity simulations, equipped with a new ray-tracing module, to numerically obtain this relation for a few black-hole-lattice cosmologies and compare it to the well-known Friedmann-Lema{ȋtre-Robertson-Walker case, as well as to other relevant cosmologies and to the Empty-Beam Approximation. We find that the latter provides the best estimate of the luminosity distance and formulate a simple argument to account for this agreement. We also find that a Friedmann-Lema{ȋtre-Robertson-Walker model can reproduce this observable exactly, as long as a time-dependent cosmological constant is included in the fit. Finally, the dependence of these results on the lattice mass-to-spacing ratio μ is discussed: we discover that, unlike the expansion rate, the DL(z) relation in a black-hole lattice does not tend to that measured in the corresponding continuum spacetime as 0μ → .

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1475-7516/2017/03/014/pdf

Mikołaj Korzyński

Papers

Evolution of a periodic eight-black-hole lattice in numerical relativity

Evolution of a family of expanding cubic black-hole lattices in numerical relativity

Backreaction and continuum limit in a closed universe filled with black holes

Mechanics of multidimensional isolated horizons

Light propagation through black-hole lattices