Gravitational energy of a magnetized Schwarzschild black hole: a teleparallel approach

We investigate the distribution of gravitational energy in the spacetime of a Schwarzschild black hole immersed in a cosmic magnetic field. This is done in the context of the teleparallel equivalent of general relativity, which is an alternative geometrical formulation of general relativity, where gravity is described by a spacetime endowed with torsion rather than curvature, whose fundamental field variables are tetrad fields. We calculate the energy enclosed by a two-surface of constant radius—in particular, the energy enclosed by the event horizon of the black hole. In this case we find that the magnetic field has the effect of increasing the gravitational energy as compared to the vacuum Schwarzschild case. We also compute the energy (i) in the weak magnetic field limit, (ii) in the limit of vanishing magnetic field, and (iii) in the absence of the black hole. In all cases our results are consistent with what should be expected on physical grounds.