1. Introduction
The Membrane Paradigm [
1] is one of the prominent ways to describe effective degrees of freedom on a Black Hole (BH) horizon. According to the Paradigm, the BH horizon is modeled as a stretched, penetrable and impacted by electromagnetic field membrane, the action of which generates the set of equations, equivalent to hydrodynamic equations of a viscous relativistic fluid [
2,
3,
4]. In this way, the BH horizon degrees of freedom are effectively described by dynamics of the dual fluid. Interest in the hydrodynamic dual description of non-gravitational fields has been increased after the AdS/CFT Duality foundation, and, as it turned out, some of the predictions of the Membrane Paradigm are directly related to outcomes of the AdS/CFT. It should be noted, the Membrane Paradigm is in no way equivalent to the AdS/CFT correspondence [
5,
6]. Though a similarity between these approaches was mentioned since the early stages of the dual CFT hydrodynamics development [
7,
8], not least due to the universal character of the transport coefficients of the dual fluid [
7,
8,
9,
10], the membrane paradigm can, at best, be treated as a leading approximation, or the low-energy limit (see [
11,
12] in this respect). Nonetheless, further development of the Membrane Paradigm may light on new prospects in the the AdS/CFT Duality progress.
In our previous work [
13] we have extended the Membrane Paradigm to the case of rotating BHs.
1 Operating with the Boyer-Lindquist coordinates representation of the Kerr solution, we concluded that the momentum density of the dual viscous fluid is divergent on the horizon. However, in General Relativity (GR), the singularity on the horizon is not always the physical (true) one; it may be a consequence of the coordinates choice. That is why one of the motivations of this paper is to re-derive the main characteristics of the dual fluid upon another, “smarter”, parametrization of the coordinates. Here we follow the Eddington-Finkelstein parametrization of the Kerr metric, and, looking ahead, let us note that all the characteristics of the dual viscous fluid become finite on the horizon in the case.
Accomplishing our goals requires a revision of main equations for the dual fluid, from which one may recover as the transport coefficients, as well as other basic characteristics – energy, pressure, expansion, the momentum vector and the shear tensor – of the medium. Previously, in [
13], we have used the energy-momentum tensor (EMT) of a stretched membrane to this end, comparing it to the EMT of a relativistic viscous fluid. Here, we will recover the mentioned characteristics of the fluid from hydrodynamic-type equations, to which the projected, onto a null hypersurface, Einstein equations with matter fields are reduced.
Specifically, 1+3 coordinate split of time-like and space-like coordinates reduces the GR equations to external/internal geometry of a hypersurface, embedded into the target space. These equations are well-known as the Gauss and Codazzi-Mainardi equations (see, e.g., [
14,
15,
16,
17]).
2 Further breaking off a space-like direction [
4] makes it possible to present the projected, onto a 2D hypersurface, Gauss-Codazzi equations as the Raychaudhuri and Navier-Stokes type equations [
3,
4,
15,
16,
18,
19,
20]. The system of these equations
3 determines the transport coefficients and other crucial parameters of the dual to a stretched membrane fluid model. But there is a nuance: the Gauss-Codazzi equations become the hydrodynamic-type equations only in the null-hypersurface limit. Taking this limit is not trivial, and should be performed with an additional care.
Indeed, there are apparent conceptual differences between the geometric description of space-like (a stretched membrane type) and null (a BH horizon type) hypersurfaces, embedded into an ordinary, with single time-like direction, 4D space-time. In the former case, one needs two orthogonal to the hypersurface time-like and space-like vectors. The latter case requires two linear-independent null-vectors transversal to the null-hypersurface. Therefore, taking the null-hypersurface limit, it becomes important to recover null-vectors from the time- and space-like vectors describing the extrinsic geometry of the located near the horizon stretched membrane. And here we describe the way to achieve this goal.
So that, the purpose of the paper is twofold. Firstly, we want to revise the procedure of getting the the Raychaudhuri and the Damour-Navier-Stokes (RDNS) equations [
3,
4,
15,
16] from the projected Gauss-Codazzi equations in the Parikh-Wilczek Membrane Approach. The main revision concerns the way of taking the horizon (the null-hypersurface) limit, i.e., transition to finite on the horizon quantities by the regularization. Details on this procedure can be found, e.g., in [
4,
13].
Within the Membrane Approach of Ref. [
4], the null-hypersurface limit is organized as setting the regularization factor (some coordinate function) to zero. The role of this function is to provide the finiteness of divergent on the event horizon stress-energy tensor of a stretched membrane. On the other hand, this regularization factor can be viewed as a degree of proximity of the membrane to the true horizon. The outcome of taking the null-hypersurface limit in the Membrane Approach is a generalization of the the RDNS-type equations by terms containing the logarithmic derivatives of the regularization factor. This result can be found in
Section 2. Here we also formulate two conditions on the regularization factor, called hereafter as the “consistency conditions”, the fulfillment of which reduces the generalized RDNS equations to their classic version [
3,
18].
And secondly, we want to check, on two exact solutions of the Einstein equation, the validity of our consistency conditions. This part of our studies represents the content of
Section 3. Here we consider the Schwarzschild and the Kerr solutions in the Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates. The simplicity of the Schwarzschild metric does not allow us to fully evaluate the limitations associated with the consistency conditions: they satisfy identically in the case. Performing the relevant computations for the Kerr solution in the Eddington-Finkelstein parametrization is less trivial. However, our consistency conditions hold even in this case. Since the feasibility of these conditions requires the tight coordination of different elements of a space-time metric, we might expect the same outcome for any exact BH solution to the Einstein equation, where such coordination does exist. For metrics, which are not exact solutions to the Einstein equations, the RDSN equations are generally extended with additional terms. Anyway, additional verification is needed in both cases.
As a by-product of our studies, we reconcile the horizon limit of the Parikh-Wilczek Membrane Approach [
4] with the Gourgoulhon-Jaramillo null-hypersurface description [
15,
16]. The 1+1+2 split of time-like and space-like coordinates is not unique, that we exemplify on the Schwarzschild and the Kerr BH solutions in
Section 3. The Gourgoulhon-Jaramillo method is universal from this point of view, and it works well for any of the coordinate splitting. The Membrane Approach is more restrictive, since there are additional internal requirements of the approach (see
Section 2 for details), which single out the appropriate coordinate splitting. The relation between these approaches is discussed in
Section 3.
Conclusions contain a brief summary of our findings and a short discussion on exact and non-exact BH solutions in the context of the paper. Appendix A includes details on the surface gravity, computation of which is another non-trivial check of the consistency of a BH-type solution.
We use the following notation through the paper. The 4D metric signature is chosen to be the mostly positive one. All indices (no matter Latin or Greek) are supposed to be the indices of 4D target space. , and are the 4D metric, 3D and 2D induced metric tensors, respectively. The induced metrics of lower spaces are used as projection operators. Then, symbol denotes 4D covariant (w.r.t. ) derivative; and are the covariant derivates w.r.t. 3D and 2D induced metrics. The explicit form of and is given in the main text of the paper.
4. Conclusions
Let us briefly summarize our findings. At the first stage of our studies, following the Parikh-Wilczek Membrane Approach to black holes, we have presented the Gauss-Codazzi equations on the horizon as hydrodynamic-type equations. We expected to derive the standard Raychaudhuri and the Damour-Navier-Stokes (RDNS) equations of a viscous fluid in this way. However, what we actually obtained looks slightly different: the final equations are the extension of the RDNS equations. Specifically, there appears new additional terms, containing derivatives of a function of the regularization parameter; this parameter is used for making the energy-momentum tensor of a stretched membrane finite on the horizon. The explicit form of this function – the logarithm in the case of the standard regularization within the Membrane Approach – depends on the way of regularization. Anyway, the established new terms can not be ignored in the null-hypersurface limit, upon building the bridge between geometry (the Gauss-Codazzi equations) and dynamics (the RDNS equations). Getting the “classic” RDNS equations back, two non-trivial conditions must be met. And the feasibility of these consistency conditions requires the tight coordination of different elements (metric, null-vectors, projected acceleration vector, regularization function) of a space-time geometry.
To investigate this issue in more detail, we have examined two notable examples of exact solutions to the Einstein equations: the Schwarzschild and the Kerr black holes. The case of the Schwarzschild solution has been considered as a warm-up exercise, aimed at establishing the machinery, which could be further applied to the Kerr solution in the Eddington-Finkelstein parametrization. In view of simplicity of the Schwarzschild solution, the mentioned consistency conditions are trivially satisfied. However, studying this case allowed us to review the relation of the Membrane Approach [
4] to the Gourgoulhon-Jaramillo [
15,
16] method of a null-hypersurface description. In fact, both approaches are different sides of the same coin, since they correspond to different 1+1+2 splitting of the same metric.
The established consistency conditions have been verified, to the full extent, in the case of the Kerr metric in the Eddington-Finkelstein parametrization. Indeed, the metric becomes complicated, the acceleration vector becomes non-trivial in the case, and the regularization function as well. So that, the verification of these consistency relations requires more technical efforts, but results in the conclusion on their fulfillment in the end. Therefore, for the Schwarzschild and the Kerr solutions, the RDNS equations of the Membrane Approach do not change. We can expect the same effect for any exact BH solution to the Einstein equations, since an exact solution provides the required tight coordination of the spacetime geometry components, leading to the fulfillment of the non-trivial consistency conditions.
However, the situation becomes different for
non-exact solutions of the BH type, like, for instance, slowly rotating BHs, metrics mimicking black holes, post-Newtonian corrected BHs etc., examples of which can be found in [
23,
24,
25,
26,
27,
28,
29]. Here, more likely, the RDNS type equations of the Membrane Approach will be extended by additional terms, since the consistency conditions will not be generally satisfied. This fact has to be taken into account upon constructing the hydrodynamics of a dual fluid as in the Membrane Approach, as well as in other versions of Duality in black holes.