This Dissertation covers three aspects of General Relativity: inequivalent Einstein metrics on Lie Group Manifolds, proving the Hoop Conjecture for Black Rings, and investigating ergoregions in magnetised black hole spacetimes. A number of analytical and numerical techniques are employed to that end. It is known that every compact simple Lie Group admits a bi-invariant homogeneous Einstein metric. We use two ansatze to probe the existence of additional inequivalent Einstein metrics on the Lie Group SU (n). We provide an explicit construction of 2k + 1 and 2k inequivalent Einstein metrics on SU (2k) and SU (2k + 1) respectively. We prove the Hoop Conjecture for neutral and charged, singly and doubly rotating black rings. This allows one to determine whether a rotating mass distribution has an event horizon, that it is in fact a black ring. We investigate ergoregions in magnetised black hole spacetimes. We show that, in general, rotating charged black holes (Kerr-Newman) immersed in an external magnetic field have ergoregions that extend to infinity near the central axis unless we restrict the charge to q = amB and keep B below a maximal value. Additionally, we show that as B is increased from zero the ergoregion adjacent to the event horizon shrinks, vanishing altogether at a critical value, before reappearing and growing until it is no longer bounded as B becomes greater than the maximal value.

The semi-classical black hole tunnelling method is a useful technique to calculate black hole temperature and understand black hole thermodynamics. I will investigate the black hole tunnelling method in detail. I will compare two different approaches used to calculate black hole tunnelling. The tunnelling method can be applied to a broad range of spacetimes and I will show this explicitly in order to demonstrate the robustness of the tunnelling technique. In particular, I will apply the tunnelling method to spacetimes including: Rindler (the method can recover the Unruh temperature), and more general spacetimes (such as Kerr-Newman and Taub-NUT). I will also discuss the 5d Kerr-Gödel spacetimes in detail (while showing a previous unobserved property of these spaces). Once the parameter space of Kerr-Gödel is understood in detail, I will show how the tunnelling method can also be successfully applied to the Kerr-Gödel black hole. Finally, the key result of my thesis involves extending the tunnelling method to model fermion emission. The previous tunnelling calculations all involved the emission of scalar particles. I will model the emission of spin-1/2 fermions from various spacetimes including the Rindler spacetime and general non-rotating black holes. I will also model the emission of charged spin-1/2 fermions from the Kerr-Newman spacetime to show that the method is also applicable to rotating spacetimes. In all these cases I show that the correct Hawking temperature (Unruh temperature in the case of Rindler) is recovered for spin-1/2 fermion emission. Although this final result is not surprising, it is an important result because it confirms that Dirac particles will radiate from the black hole at the same temperature as scalar particles. It has always been assumed that this is the case but there is very little literature involving fermion radiation of black holes. So the results of my calculations are twofold, I demonstrate that Dirac particles are emitted at the same temperature as scalar particles from a black hole and it shows how robust the semi-classical tunnelling technique is.

The semi-classical black hole tunnelling method is a useful technique to calculate black hole temperature and understand black hole thermodynamics. I will investigate the black hole tunnelling method in detail. I will compare two different approaches used to calculate black hole tunnelling. The tunnelling method can be applied to a broad range of spacetimes and I will show this explicitly in order to demonstrate the robustness of the tunnelling technique. In particular, I will apply the tunnelling method to spacetimes including: Rindler (the method can recover the Unruh temperature), and more general spacetimes (such as Kerr-Newman and Taub-NUT). I will also discuss the 5d Kerr-Gödel spacetimes in detail (while showing a previous unobserved property of these spaces). Once the parameter space of Kerr-Gödel is understood in detail, I will show how the tunnelling method can also be successfully applied to the Kerr-Gödel black hole. Finally, the key result of my thesis involves extending the tunnelling method to model fermion emission. The previous tunnelling calculations all involved the emission of scalar particles. I will model the emission of spin-1/2 fermions from various spacetimes including the Rindler spacetime and general non-rotating black holes. I will also model the emission of charged spin-1/2 fermions from the Kerr-Newman spacetime to show that the method is also applicable to rotating spacetimes. In all these cases I show that the correct Hawking temperature (Unruh temperature in the case of Rindler) is recovered for spin-1/2 fermion emission. Although this final result is not surprising, it is an important result because it confirms that Dirac particles will radiate from the black hole at the same temperature as scalar particles. It has always been assumed that this is the case but there is very little literature involving fermion radiation of black holes. So the results of my calculations are twofold, I demonstrate that Dirac particles are emitted at the same temperature as scalar particles from a black hole and it shows how robust the semi-classical tunnelling technique is.

<p>Penrose's inequality which relates the total mass of a space-time containing a black hole with the area of the event horizon, is a yet unproven condition that is required for the cosmic censorship hypothesis. It is believed that the inequality could be proved by using properties of the Hawking mass. This thesis gives analytical expressions for the Hawking mass in slowly rotating Kerr and Kerr-Newman space-times. It is also shown that the expressions are monotonically increasing, a result that does not contradict Penrose's inequality.</p>

Penrose's inequality which relates the total mass of a space-time containing a black hole with the area of the event horizon, is a yet unproven condition that is required for the cosmic censorship hypothesis. It is believed that the inequality could be proved by using properties of the Hawking mass. This thesis gives analytical expressions for the Hawking mass in slowly rotating Kerr and Kerr-Newman space-times. It is also shown that the expressions are monotonically increasing, a result that does not contradict Penrose's inequality.

In this thesis, the stability of the family of subextremal Kerr-Newman space- times is studied in the case of linear scalar perturbations. That is, nondegenerate energy bounds (NEB) and integrated local energy decay (ILED) results are proved for solutions of the wave equation on the domain of outer communications. The main obstacles to the proof of these results are superradiance, trapping and their interaction. These difficulties are surmounted by localising solutions of the wave equation in phase space and applying the vector field method. Miraculously, as in the Kerr case, superradiance and trapping occur in disjoint regions of phase space and can be dealt with individually. Trapping is a high frequency obstruction to the proof whereas superradiance occurs at both high and low frequencies. The construction of energy currents for superradiant frequencies gives rise to an unfavourable boundary term. In the high frequency regime, this boundary term is controlled by exploiting the presence of a large parameter. For low superradiant frequencies, no such parameter is available. This difficulty is overcome by proving quantitative versions of mode stability type results. The mode stability result on the real axis is then applied to prove integrated local energy decay for solutions of the wave equation restricted to a bounded frequency regime. The (ILED) statement is necessarily degenerate due to the trapping effect. This implies that a nondegenerate (ILED) statement must lose differentiability. If one uses an (ILED) result that loses differentiability to prove (NEB), this loss is passed onto the (NEB) statement as well. Here, the geometry of the subextremal Kerr-Newman background is exploited to obtain the (NEB) statement directly from the degenerate (ILED) with no loss of differentiability.

We extend previous work (2020Class. Quantum Grav. 37 075001)to the case of Maxwell’s equations with a source. Our work shows how to construct a vector potential for the Maxwell field on the Kerr–Newman background in a radiation gauge. The vector potential has a ‘reconstructed’ term obtained from a Hertz potential solving Teukolsky’s equation with a source, and a ‘correction’ term which is obtainable by a simple integration along outgoing principal null rays. The singularity structure of our vector potential is discussed in the case of a point particle source

Les résultats présentés dans cette thèse concernent l'étude de la<br />théorie de la diffusion pour des champs de Dirac dans plusieurs<br />espaces-temps de la relativité générale. Les méthodes complètement<br />dépendantes du temps développées par Enss, Sigal, Soffer, Graf,<br />Derezi\'nski et Gérard constituent le fil conducteur de ce<br />travail. Ces méthodes sont basées sur des estimations de propagation<br />comme les estimations de vitesse minimale (obtenues par une théorie de<br />Mourre) qui correspondent à une version faible du principe de Huygens <br />et sur l'étude d'observables asymptotiques naturelles comme les<br />opérateurs de vitesse asymptotiques. Dans un premier temps, on teste<br />ces méthodes en étudiant la propagation de champs de Dirac, massifs ou<br />non, perturbés par des potentiels à longue portée, en espace-temps<br />plat. On montre ainsi <br />l'existence et la complétude asymptotique des opérateurs d'onde<br />modifiés. Dans un deuxième temps, on s'intéresse à des situations<br />géométriques plus compliquées en étudiant la propagation de ces champs<br />à l'extérieur de trous noirs de Reissner-Nordström (à symétrie<br />sphérique) et de Kerr-Newman (en rotation) du point de vue<br />d'observateurs lointains. L'originalité de ce type d'étude réside dans<br />le fait que les observateurs distinguent deux régions asymptotiques<br />(l'horizon du trou noir et l'infini spatial) aux structures<br />géométriques bien différentes ce qui entraîne l'existence de deux<br />canaux de diffusion. Dans le cas de trous noirs à symétrie<br />sphérique, une décomposition sur une base d'harmoniques sphériques<br />permet de se ramener à un problème à une dimension d'espace, du type<br />espace-temps plat. La difficulté essentielle provient alors de<br />l'absence de symétrie sphérique des trous noirs de Kerr-Newman qui<br />rend impossible une telle simplification. Dans les deux cas, on montre <br />l'existence et la complétude asymptotique des opérateurs d'onde<br />(modifiés à l'infini) à l'aide des méthodes dépendantes du temps.

The subject of study of this thesis is the Kerr-Newman-(anti-)de Sitter space- time, a rotating and charged exact black-hole solution of the Einstein-Maxwell equations with a non-zero cosmological constant. In the first part of the thesis we examine admissible extremal configurations, present the corresponding Penrose diagrams, and investigate the effects of frame-dragging. In the second part, we follow the motion of charged particles via the Lagrangian formalism, focusing on the equatorial plane and the axis where we arrived at some analytic results con- cerning the trajectories. Static particles, effective potentials and - in the case of the equatorial plane - stationary circular orbits are examined. We also perform numerical simulations of particle motion to be able to check our analytic results and also to foster our intuition regarding the behaviour of the test particles. The last part concerns quantum tunnelling of particles through the space-time's hori- zons, specifically the null geodesic method. The main goal of these computations is to obtain horizon temperatures, in which we succeed up to a constant multi- plicative factor. We discuss various pitfalls of the method and stake out a possible approach when applying it to the extreme horizons present in KN(a)dS. 1