Plumbing constructions and the domain of outer communication for 5-dimensional stationary black holes

The topology of the domain of outer communication for 5-dimen-sional stationary bi-axisymmetric black holes is classified in terms of disc bundles over the 2-sphere and plumbing constructions. In particular we find an algorithmic bijective correspondence between the plumbing of disc bundles and the rod structure formalism for such spacetimes. Furthermore, we describe a canonical fill-in for the black hole region and cap for the asymptotic region. The resulting compactified domain of outer communication is then shown to be homeomorphic to S⁴, a connected sum of S² × S²’s, or a connected sum of complex projective planes CP². Combined with recent existence results, it is shown that all such topological types are realized by vacuum solutions. In addition, our methods treat all possible types of asymptotic ends, including spacetimes which are asymptotically flat, asymptotically Kaluza-Klein, or asymptotically locally Euclidean.