A Black-Hole Primer: Particles, Waves, Critical Phenomena and Superradiant Instabilities

Abstract: These notes were prepared for a lecture on black holes delivered at the DPG Physics School "General Relativity @ 99" (Physikzentrum Bad Honnef, Germany, September 2014). The common thread of the lecture is the relation between geodesic stability and black-hole perturbations in the geometric optics limit. Chapter 1 establishes notation and discusses a common misconception on Michell's "Newtonian black holes". Chapters 2 and 3 deal with particle dynamics and wave dynamics in black-hole spacetimes, respectively. All calculations should be simple enough that they can be done with pen and paper. Chapter 4 builds on this introduction to discuss two exciting topics in current research: critical phenomena in black-hole mergers and the black-hole bomb instability.