Blackfold Approach for Higher-Dimensional Black Holes

In this article we review the blackfold approach, a recently developed effective worldvolume description of higher-dimensional black holes, that captures the long wavelength dynamics of black holes with horizons exhibiting two characteristic lengths of very different size. In this regime the black hole is regarded as a black brane curved into a submanifold of a background spacetime, and can be formulated in terms of an effective fluid that lives on a dynamical worldvolume. We discuss the resulting blackfold equations, which separate into a set of intrinsic and extrinsic equations. The general solution of the intrinsic fluid equations for stationary configurations is presented along with a class of novel stationary black hole solutions. We also comment on how the formalism can be used to study time evolution and stability of blackfolds. (author)