Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Notation
- 1 Superluminal motion in the quasar 3C273
- 2 Curved spacetime and SgrA*
- 3 Parallel transport and isometry of tangent bundles
- 4 Maxwell's equations
- 5 Riemannian curvature
- 6 Gravitational radiation
- 7 Cosmological event rates
- 8 Compressible fluid dynamics
- 9 Waves in relativistic magnetohydrodynamics
- 10 Nonaxisymmetric waves in a torus
- 11 Phenomenology of GRB supernovae
- 12 Kerr black holes
- 13 Luminous black holes
- 14 A luminous torus in gravitational radiation
- 15 GRB supernovae from rotating black holes
- 16 Observational opportunities for LIGO and Virgo
- 17 Epilogue: GRB/XRF singlets, doublets? Triplets!
- Appendix A Landau's derivation of a maximal mass
- Appendix B Thermodynamics of luminous black holes
- Appendix C Spin–orbit coupling in the ergotube
- Appendix D Pair creation in a Wald field
- Appendix E Black hole spacetimes in the complex plan
- Appendix F Some units, constants and numbers
- References
- Index
Appendix D - Pair creation in a Wald field
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Notation
- 1 Superluminal motion in the quasar 3C273
- 2 Curved spacetime and SgrA*
- 3 Parallel transport and isometry of tangent bundles
- 4 Maxwell's equations
- 5 Riemannian curvature
- 6 Gravitational radiation
- 7 Cosmological event rates
- 8 Compressible fluid dynamics
- 9 Waves in relativistic magnetohydrodynamics
- 10 Nonaxisymmetric waves in a torus
- 11 Phenomenology of GRB supernovae
- 12 Kerr black holes
- 13 Luminous black holes
- 14 A luminous torus in gravitational radiation
- 15 GRB supernovae from rotating black holes
- 16 Observational opportunities for LIGO and Virgo
- 17 Epilogue: GRB/XRF singlets, doublets? Triplets!
- Appendix A Landau's derivation of a maximal mass
- Appendix B Thermodynamics of luminous black holes
- Appendix C Spin–orbit coupling in the ergotube
- Appendix D Pair creation in a Wald field
- Appendix E Black hole spacetimes in the complex plan
- Appendix F Some units, constants and numbers
- References
- Index
Summary
The action of a gravitational field is perhaps most dramatic in the case of pair creation. Pair creation results in response to large gradients in a potential energy.
A formal calculation scheme for pair creation in curved spacetime is based on wavefront analysis. This is well-defined between asymptotically flat in- and out-vacua in terms of their Hilbert spaces of radiative states. Any jump in the zero energy levels of these two Hilbert spaces becomes apparent by studying the propagation of wavefronts between the in- and out-vacuum[153, 56]. It is perhaps best-known from the Schwinger process[388, 158, 144, 157] and in dynamical spacetimes in cosmological scenarios[56]. The energy spectrum of the particles is ordinarily nonthermal, with the notable exception of the thermal spectrum in Hawking radiation from a horizon surface formed in gravitational collapse to a black hole[254].
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005