An extension of Birkhoff's theorem to a class of 2-d gravity theories containing black holes

Abstract

A class of 2-dimensional models including 2-d dilaton gravity, spherically symmetric reduction of d-dimensional Einstein gravity and other related theories are classically analyzed. The general analytic solutions in the absence of matter fields other than a U(1) gauge field are obtained under a new gauge choice and recast in the conventional conformal gauge. These solutions imply that Birkhoff's theorem, originally applied to spherically symmetric 4-d Einstein gravity, can be applied to all models we consider. Some issues related to the coupling of massless scalar fields and the quantization are briefly discussed.