General Relativity Seminar

Speaker: Nikolaos Athanasiou

Title: A scale-critical trapped surface formation criterion for the Einstein-Maxwell system

Abstract: Few notions within the realm of mathematical physics succeed in capturing the imagination and inspiring awe as well as that of a black hole. First encountered in the Schwarzschild solution, discovered a few months after the presentation of the Field Equations of General Relativity at the Prussian Academy of Sciences, the black hole as a mathematical phenomenon accompanies and prominently features within the history of General Relativity since its inception. In this talk we will lay out a brief history of the question of dynamical black hole formation in General Relativity and discuss a result, in collaboration with Xinliang An, on a scale-critical trapped surface formation criterion for the Einstein-Maxwell system.