Evaporation of microscopic black holes

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Piero Nicolini
• Subject Area: Nuclear and Elementary Particle Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, Fields
• Term: from 2012 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 210757101

Black holes are often regarded as exotic and mysterious objects in deep space and are associated with regions of no return in our universe. Even if fascinating, this is a narrow vision. In 1975 Hawking showed that black holes can evaporate, i.e., they can emit thermal radiation like a black body. By losing energy during the evaporation, a black hole becomes hotter and increases its evaporation rate:the process is divergent in its terminal phase and there is no clear explanation for the evaporation endpoint. The project aims to clarify the theoretical scenario about the evaporation taking into account quantum gravity effects in black holes at short scales. More specifically, there are two main goals we want to address: the black hole decay, namely the black hole evolution in terms of all possible emission mechanisms, which include besides the Hawking effect, the Schwinger effect and the Unruh-Starobinskii effect; the black hole ultimate fate, with particular attention about the consequences of a remnant formation as a evaporation end point. To reach these goals we will make use of effective quantum gravity black hole spacetimes that are for now the only models able to overcome the inconsistencies of the Hawking theory and determine testable scenarios for the black holes after the completion of evaporation. The timeliness of the project is motivated by the fact that we could be close to the detection of some signatures of black hole formation in particle detectors as expected in experiments currently run at the large hadron collider.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants