New form of the Kerr-Newman solution

Abstract

A new form of the Kerr-Newman solution is presented. The solution involves a time coordinate which represents the local proper time for a charged massive particle released from rest at spatial infinity. The chosen coordinates ensure that the solution is well-behaved at horizons and enable an intuitive description of many physical phenomena. If the charge of the particle $e = 0$, the coordinates reduce to Doran coordinates for the Kerr solution with the replacement $M \to M - Q^2/(2r)$, where $M$ and $Q$ are the mass and charge of the black hole, respectively. Such coordinates are valid only for $r \ge Q^2/(2M)$, however, which corresponds to the region that a neutral particle released from rest at infinity can penetrate. By contrast, for $e \neq 0$ and of opposite sign to $Q$, the new coordinates have a progressively extended range of validity as $|e|$ increases and tend to advanced Eddington-Finkelstein (EF) null coordinates as $|e| \to \infty$, hence becoming global in this limit. The Kerr solution (i.e.\ with $Q=0$) may also be written in terms of the new coordinates by setting $eQ = -\alpha$, where $\alpha$ is a real parameter unrelated to charge; in this case the coordinate system is global for all non-negative values of $\alpha$ and the limits $\alpha = 0$ and $\alpha \to \infty$ correspond to Doran coordinates and advanced EF null coordinates, respectively, without any need to transform between them.