Can Every Spherically Symmetric Spacetime Be Represented by a Penrose Diagram?

Click For Summary
SUMMARY

This discussion centers on the representation of spherically symmetric spacetimes through Penrose diagrams, specifically addressing the feasibility of drawing precise diagrams for all spacetimes. Participants recommend "The Road to Reality" by Roger Penrose as a foundational text, noting its introduction of basic notation and concepts related to Penrose diagrams. The conversation also highlights the significance of null geodesics and their representation in these diagrams, with references to specific cases such as the Schwarzschild and Reissner-Nordström metrics. Additionally, participants share links to various PDFs that elaborate on the construction of Penrose diagrams and coordinate transformations.

PREREQUISITES
  • Understanding of Penrose diagrams and their significance in general relativity.
  • Familiarity with Schwarzschild and Reissner-Nordström metrics.
  • Basic knowledge of null geodesics and their representation in spacetime diagrams.
  • Experience with coordinate transformations, particularly Kruskal-Szekeres coordinates.
NEXT STEPS
  • Study the construction of Penrose diagrams for various spacetimes, focusing on the Schwarzschild metric.
  • Explore the coordinate transformation techniques from Kruskal-Szekeres to Penrose diagrams.
  • Read "The Road to Reality" by Roger Penrose for a comprehensive understanding of the notation and concepts.
  • Investigate additional resources on conformal diagrams and their applications in general relativity.
USEFUL FOR

Students and researchers in theoretical physics, particularly those focused on general relativity, cosmology, and the study of black holes. This discussion is also beneficial for anyone interested in the graphical representation of complex spacetime structures.

  • #31
Thanks.

If Penrose-Carter diagram means:

1) compactificated space-time diagram and
2) null-like world lines are 45 degree lines

than, every spherically symmetric space-time has Carer-Penrose diagram?
If Yes, can you cite a paper about proving the existence?

Else:
on the 2D Carter-Penrose diagram only radial motion can be studied,
what about 3D=2+1 Penrose-Carter diagrams? Can you draw it?
The 2D diagram is simply rotated?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
  • #32
mersecske said:
Thanks.

If Penrose-Carter diagram means:

1) compactificated space-time diagram and
2) null-like world lines are 45 degree lines

than, every spherically symmetric space-time has Carer-Penrose diagram?
Yes, I found a reference confirming this--see p. 48 of 'Gravitational Collapse and Spacetime Singularities on google books, in the paragraph right before section 2.7.4 the author says:
The structure of infinity for any spherically symmetric spacetime can be depicted by a similar Penrose diagram.
Likewise, p. 20 of http://www.mittag-leffler.se/preprints/0809f/files/IML-0809f-14.pdf talks about how to define the black hole interior region as a complement of the exterior region described in terms of a Penrose diagram, and says:
For spherically symmetric spacetimes arising as solutions of the Cauchy problem for (2), one can show that there always exists a Penrose diagram, and thus, a definition can be formalised along precisely these lines (see [60]).
Here reference [60] is M. Dafermos http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/22/11/019/
mersecske said:
If Yes, can you cite a paper about proving the existence?
I think the Dafermos paper above probably proves it, although understanding it would probably require more knowledge of topological reasoning in GR than I have...
mersecske said:
on the 2D Carter-Penrose diagram only radial motion can be studied,
what about 3D=2+1 Penrose-Carter diagrams? Can you draw it?
The 2D diagram is simply rotated?
No, it can't be a simple rotation, that would imply that in the maximally extended Schwarzschild solution one could travel around in a circle from the exterior region I on the right to the other exterior region III on the left of the diagram, which is supposed to represent a "different universe"! In fact I would guess (though I don't know this for a fact) that if Penrose diagrams are specific to spherically symmetric spacetimes, then they would always be two dimensional, with the radial dimension shown and the angular coordinates suppressed. It may help to think in terms of the fact that any if you take any spacelike surface through a Penrose diagram (or a Kruskal-Szkeres diagram, which looks basically identical except that it doesn't compress the spacetime to a finite size), which will just be any line closer to the horizontal than 45 degrees, there will be an http://www.bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~suchii/embed.diag.html showing the curvature of space in that spacelike surface. This embedding diagram will depict one of the two angular dimensions in addition to the radial dimension depicted on the Penrose/Kruskal-Szekeres diagram. For example, p. 528 of Gravitation by Misner/Thorne/Wheeler shows embedding diagrams for various spacelike slices through the Kruskal-Szekeres diagram:

p528Gravitationsmall.jpg


Each point on a Penrose/Kruskal-Szekeres diagram actually represents a spherical region of space at constant radius (with both angular coordinates allowed to vary), so in the embedding diagrams each point on the spacelike surface becomes a circle (since the embedding diagram only shows 2 of the 3 spatial dimensions)--you can see that a cross-section of any of the above embedding diagrams would be a circle (several of these embedding diagrams illustrate a Schwarzschild wormhole or 'Einstein-Rosen bridge', see also the animations in the section of http://casa.colorado.edu/~ajsh/schww.html titled 'Instability of the Schwarzschild Wormhole'). Here, on the other hand, you can see on the right a Kruskal-Szekeres diagram for a more realistic black hole that forms from a collapsing star, with no white hole interior region or second exterior region on the left:

realisticBHkruskalsmall.jpg


And here was my guess about what embedding diagrams for spacelike slices through this diagram would look like:

sketchofrealisticBHsmall.jpg
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Similar threads

  • · Replies 7 ·
Replies
7
Views
2K
  • · Replies 5 ·
Replies
5
Views
3K
  • · Replies 15 ·
Replies
15
Views
3K
  • · Replies 4 ·
Replies
4
Views
2K
  • · Replies 10 ·
Replies
10
Views
2K
  • · Replies 37 ·
2
Replies
37
Views
7K
  • · Replies 5 ·
Replies
5
Views
2K
  • · Replies 6 ·
Replies
6
Views
3K
  • · Replies 17 ·
Replies
17
Views
4K
  • · Replies 20 ·
Replies
20
Views
3K