Peter Diener's WWW-exhibition

Description and visualization of particle trajectories near black holes

This WWW-exhibition will try to describe the strange kinds of motions particles can perform in the strongly relativistic regime near a black hole.

Table of contents

  1. Short introduction to general relativity
  2. Geodesics
  3. Black Holes
  4. The equations of motion
  5. The effective potential
  6. Visualization examples
  7. Examine the potential barrier
  8. Visualize your own geodesics

7. Examine the potential barrier

Here you are encouraged to try out different parameters and use the plots of the effective potential to find interesting cases and then go here to see the trajectories.
Specify the rotation parameter of the black hole, the z-component of the angular momentum and Carter's fourth constant and in return you will get a plot of the effective potential and information about the location of minimae and maximae. You can also choose a specfic value of the energy of the particle and get information about the allowed range of the radial coordinate and polar angle.
Enter black hole rotation parameter    ( ) 

Specify the z-component of the angular momentum      

Specify Carter's fourth constant      

Specify a specific value of the energy