Many accelerating black holes

Abstract

We show how the Weyl formalism allows metrics to be written down which correspond to arbitrary numbers of collinear accelerating neutral black holes in 3 + 1 dimensions. The black holes have arbitrary masses and different accelerations and share a common acceleration horizon. In the general case, the black holes are joined by cosmic strings or struts that provide the necessary forces that, together with the inter black-hole gravitational attractions, produce the acceleration. In the cases of two and three black holes, the parameters may be chosen so that the outermost black hole is pulled along by a cosmic string and the inner black holes follow behind accelerated purely by gravitational forces. We conjecture that similar solutions exist for any number of black holes.