Basics of Apparent Horizons in Black Hole Physics

Abstract: Event Horizon, a null hypersurface defining the boundary of the black hole region of a spacetime, is not particularly useful for evolving black holes since it is non-local in time. Instead, one uses the more tangible concept of Apparent Horizon for dynamical black holes out there in the sky that do all sorts of things: evolve, merge and feed on the environment. Event Horizon, being a gauge-independent, global property of the total spacetime is easy to define and locate in the stationary case; on the other hand, Apparent Horizon depends on the embedding of the surface in spacetime and hence it is somewhat tricky to define. But for numerical simulations in General Relativity, locating the Apparent Horizon helps one to excise the black hole region and the singularity to have a stable computation. Moreover, for stationary solutions the two horizons match. Here we give a detailed pedagogical exposition of the subject and work out the non-trivial case of a slowly moving and spinning black hole.