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RESEARCH PRODUCT

MOTS in Schwarzschild: multiple self-intersections and extreme mass ratio mergers

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We study the open and closed axisymmetric marginally outer trapped surfaces contained in leaves of constant Painlev\'e-Gullstrand time for Schwarzschild spacetimes. We identify a family of closed MOTS in the black hole interior characterized by an arbitrary number of self-intersections. This suggests that the self-intersecting behaviour reported in [Phys.Rev.D 100, 084044 (2019)] may be a far more generic phenomenon than expected. We also consider open surfaces, finding that their behaviour is highly constrained but includes surfaces with multiple self-intersections inside the horizon. We argue that the behaviour of open MOTS identifies and constrains the possible local behaviour of MOTS during extreme mass ratio mergers.