The anti-de Sitter Gott universe: a rotating BTZ wormhole

Recently, it has been shown that a (2 + 1)-dimensional black hole can be created by the collapse of two colliding massless particles in an otherwise empty anti-de Sitter space. Here we generalize this construction to the case of a non-zero impact parameter. The resulting spacetime, which may be regarded as a Gott universe in an anti-de Sitter background, contains closed timelike curves. By treating these as singular we are able to interpret our solution as a rotating black hole, hence providing a link between the Gott universe and the BTZ black hole. When analysing the spacetime we see how the full causal structure of the interior can be almost completely inferred just from considerations of the conformal boundary.