A distinguished (invariant) Bondi-like coordinate system is defined in the spacetime neighbourhood of a non-expanding horizon of arbitrary dimension via geometry invariants of the horizon. With its use, the radial expansion of a spacetime metric about the horizon is provided and the free data needed to specify it up to given order are determined in spacetime dimension 4. For the case of an electro-vacuum horizon in 4-dimensional spacetime the necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a Killing field at its neighbourhood are identified as differential conditions on the horizon data and data on null surface transversal to the horizon.PACS numbers: 04.70.Bw, 04.50.Gh
I. INTRODUCTIONSystematic studies of black holes in various approaches to quantum gravity as well as accurate description of the dynamical evolution of these exotic objects require a quasi-local description formalism -where a black hole can be treated as "object in the lab" and the global spacetime structure of the universe far away from it can be neglected. Among several approaches to construct such formalism [1, 2] one of considerable success is the theory of Isolated Horizons [3][4][5]. This approach was originally inspired by ideas of Pejerski and Newman [1], next shaped into a solid formalism by Ashtekar [6] and subsequently developed by many researchers. Its main feature is the representation of a black hole in equilibrium through its surface -the non-expanding (or isolated) horizon -a null cylinder of codimension 1 and of compact spatial slices embedded in a Lorentzian spacetime. The black hole is characterized by the geometry (and possibly matter fields) data on this surface only. Both geometry aspects [6,7] and the mechanics [8,9] have been systematically studied in spacetime dimension 4 and then extended to general dimension [10][11][12], the latter including in particular asymptotically Anti-deSitter spacetimes [13]. Also various matter content at the horizon has been considered [14] as well as the properties of symmetric horizons [15] and their relation with standard black hole solutions [16,17]. The formalism has been further extended to the non-equilibrium situations through the Dynamical Horizons [18] (see also [4]). It is vastly applied in numerical relativity (see for example [19]) as well as in black hole description in loop quantum gravity [20] -especially as the basis for entropy calculations (see for example [21]). The extension to this formalism has found applications also in supergravity [22] and string theory inspired gravity [23].The quasi-locality of the theory is a great advantage, as only the geometry objects at the horizon are relevant in the description, however for this very reason one misses the information about the black hole neighbourhood. However, the success of the formalism of near horizon geometries [24] shows clearly, that there is a strong demand for any black hole description method to be able to also "handle" its neighbourhood, a feature particularly relevant for the studies of black hole spaceti...