No abstract

The formulation of Weak Isolated Horizons (WIH) based on the Isolated Horizon formulation of black hole horizons is reconsidered. The first part of the paper deals with the derivation of laws of mechanics of a WIH. While the zeroth law follows from the WIH boundary conditions, first law depends on the action chosen. We construct the covariant phase space for a spacetime having an WIH as inner boundary for the Holst action. This requires the introduction of new potential functions so that the symplectic structure is foliation independent. We show that a precise cancellation among various terms leads to the usual first law for WIH. Subsequently, we show from the same covariant phase space that for spherical horizons, the topological theory on the inner boundary is a U (1) Chern-Simons theory.

We establish the physical process version of the first law by studying small perturbations of a stationary black hole with a regular bifurcation surface in Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity. Our result shows that when the stationary black hole is perturbed by a matter stress energy tensor and finally settles down to a new stationary state, the Wald entropy increases as long as the matter satisfies the null energy condition.

The formulation of quasi-local conformal Killling horizons(CKH) is extended to include rotation. This necessitates that the horizon be foliated by 2-spheres which may be distorted. Matter degrees of freedom which fall through the horizon is taken to be a real scalar field. We show that these rotating CKHs also admit a first law in differential form.Comment: 15 pages. sequel to arXiv:1412.5115. Definition slightly modified, an appendix adde

Weak isolated horizon boundary conditions have been relaxed supposedly to their weakest form such that both zeroth and the first law of black hole mechanics still emerge, thus making the formulation more amenable for applications in both analytic and numerical Relativity. As an additional gain it explicitly brings the non-extremal and extremal black holes at the same footing.