Les Houches Lectures on Black Holes

Abstract

Contents: 1. Introduction 2. Causal Structure and Penrose Diagrams: Minkowski Space; 1+1 Dimensional Minkowski Space; Schwarzchild Black Holes; Gravitational Collapse and the Vaidya Spacetimes; Event Horizons, Apparent Horizons, and Trapped Surfaces 3. Black Holes in Two Dimensions: General Relativity in the $S$-Wave Sector; Classical Dilaton Gravity; Eternal Black Holes; Coupling to Conformal Matter; Hawking Radiation and the Trace Anomaly; The Quantum State; Including the Back-Reaction; The Large $N$ Approximation; Conformal Invariance and Generalizations of Dilaton Gravity; The Soluble $RST$ Model 4. The Information Puzzle in Four Dimensions: Can the Information Come Out Before the Endpoint?; Low-Energy Effective Descriptions of the Planckian Endpoint; Remnants?; Information Destruction?; The Superposition Principle; Energy Conservation The New Rules; Superselection Sectors, $\alpha$-parameters, and the Restoration of Unitarity 5. Conclusions and Outlook