Convex foliations and trapped submanifolds

Abstract

The conjecture that compact trapped submanifolds (CTMs) of any codimension greater than one cannot intersect the domain of outer communications of a black hole is tested in symmetrically collapsing spacetimes of $n+1$ dimensions, $n \geq 2$, and on the entire Kerr-Newman sub-extreme family. The results provide evidence to the idea that CTMs of lower dimension, such as trapped loops, should be ragarded as black hole signatures.