Dirty black holes: Spacetime geometry and near-horizon symmetries

Abstract

We consider the spacetime geometry of a static but otherwise generic black hole (that is, the horizon geometry and topology are not necessarily spherically symmetric). It is demonstrated, by purely geometrical techniques, that the curvature tensors, and the Einstein tensor in particular, exhibit a very high degree of symmetry as the horizon is approached. Consequently, the stress-energy tensor will be highly constrained near any static Killing horizon. More specifically, it is shown that -- at the horizon -- the stress-energy tensor block-diagonalizes into ``transverse'' and ``parallel'' blocks, the transverse components of this tensor are proportional to the transverse metric, and these properties remain invariant under static conformal deformations. Moreover, we speculate that this geometric symmetry underlies Carlip's notion of an asymptotic near-horizon conformal symmetry controlling the entropy of a black hole.