Year: 1993
Type: article
Abstract: It has recently become fashionable to regard black holes as elementary particles. By taking this suggestion reasonably seriously it is possible to cobble together an elementary particle physics based on estimate for the decay rate (black hole) i → (black hole) f+ (massless quantum) . This estimate of the spontaneous emission rate contains two free parameters which may be fixed by demanding that the high energy end of the spectrum of emitted quanta match a black body spectrum at the Hawking temperature. The calculation, though technically trivial, has important conceptual implications: (1) The existence of Hawking radiation from black holes seems ultimately dependent only on the fact that massless quanta (and all other forms of matter) couple to gravity. (2) The essentially thermal nature of the Hawking spectrum seems to depend only on the fact that the number of internal states of a large mass black hole is enormous. (3) Remarkably, the resulting formula for the decay rate gives meaningful answers even when extrapolated to low mass black holes. The analysis seems to support the scenario of complete evaporation as the end point of the Hawking radiation process (no naked singularity, no stable massive remnant).
Source: Modern Physics Letters A
Author: MATT VISSER
Institution: Washington University in St. Louis
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2056976484