The Schwarzschild black holes discussed in Chapter 12 are not the most general black hole spacetimes predicted by general relativity. They are simple objects – exactly spherically symmetric and characterized by a single parameter, the total mass. Remarkably, the most general stationary black hole solutions of the vacuum Einstein equation are not much more complicated. They are described by the family of geometries discovered by Roy Kerr in 1963, and are called Kerr black holes. Members of the family depend on just two parameters – the total mass and total angular momentum. Kerr black holes are the rotating generalizations of the Schwarzschild black hole. This chapter gives an elementary introduction to their properties.
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