Primordial Black Holes: Pair Creation, Lorentzian Condition, and Evaporation

The wave function of the universe is usuallytaken to be a functional of the threemetric on aspacelike section, , which is measured. It issometimes better, however, to work in the conjugaterepresentation, where the wave function depends on a quantityrelated to the second fundamental form of . Thismakes it possible to ensure that is part of aLorentzian universe by requiring that the argument of the wave function be purely imaginary. Wedemonstrate the advantages of this formalism first inthe well-known examples of the nucleation of a de Sitteror a Nariai universe. We then use it to calculate the pair creation rate for submaximal blackholes in de Sitter space, which had been thought tovanish semiclassically. We also study the quantumevolution of asymptotically de Sitter black holes. Forblack holes whose size is comparable to that of thecosmological horizon, this process differs significantlyfrom the evaporation of asymptotically flat black holes.Our model includes the one-loop effective action in the s-wave and large-N approximation.Black holes of the maximal mass are in equilibrium.Unexpectedly, we find that nearly maximal quantumSchwarzschild–de Sitter black holes antievaporate.However, there is a different perturbative mode thatleads to evaporation. We show that this mode will alwaysbe excited when a pair of maximal cosmological blackholes nucleates.     

Black holes in general relativity

It is assumed that the singularities which occur in gravitational collapse are not visible from outside but are hidden behind an event horizon. This means that one can still predict the future outside the event horizon. A black hole on a spacelike surface is defined to be a connected component of the region of the surface bounded by the event horizon. As time increase, black holes may merge together but can never bifurcate. A black hole would be expected to settle down to a stationary state. It is shown that a stationary black hole must have topologically spherical boundary and must be axisymmetric if it is rotating. These results together with those of Israel and Carter go most of the way towards establishing the conjecture that any stationary black hole is a Kerr solution. Using this conjecture and the result that the surface area of black holes can never decrease, one can place certain limits on the amount of energy that can be extracted from black holes.     

Thermodynamics of black holes in anti-de Sitter space

The Einstein equations with a negative cosmological constant admit black hole solutions which are asymptotic to anti-de Sitter space. Like black holes in asymptotically flat space, these solutions have thermodynamic properties including a characteristic temperature and an intrinsic entropy equal to one quarter of the area of the event horizon in Planck units. There are however some important differences from the asymptotically flat case. A black hole in anti-de Sitter space has a minimum temperature which occurs when its size is of the order of the characteristic radius of the anti-de Sitter space. For larger black holes the red-shifted temperature measured at infinity is greater. This means that such black holes have positive specific heat and can be in stable equilibrium with thermal radiation at a fixed temperature. It also implies that the canonical ensemble exists for asymptotically anti-de Sitter space, unlike the case for asymptotically flat space. One can also consider the microcanonical ensemble. One can avoid the problem that arises in asymptotically flat space of having to put the system in a box with unphysical perfectly reflecting walls because the gravitational potential of anti-de Sitter space acts as a box of finite volume.     

Local observation in eternal inflation

We consider landscape models that admit several regions where the conditions for eternal inflation hold. It is shown that one can use the no-boundary wave function to calculate small departures from homogeneity within our past light cone despite the possibility of much larger fluctuations on super horizon scales. The dominant contribution comes from the history exiting eternal inflation at the lowest value of the potential. In a class of landscape models this predicts a tensor to scalar ratio of about 10%. In this way the no-boundary wave function defines a measure for the prediction of local cosmological observations.     

Positive mass theorems for black holes

We extend Witten's proof of the positive mass theorem at spacelike infinity to show that the mass is positive for initial data on an asymptotically flat spatial hypersurface Σ which is regular outside an apparent horizonH. In addition, we prove that if a black hole has electromagnetic charge, then the mass is greater than the modulus of the charge. These results are also valid for the Bondi mass at null infinity. Finally, in the case of the Einstein equation with a negative cosmological constant, we show that a suitably defined mass is positive for data on an asymptotically anti-de Sitter surface Σ which is regular outside an apparent horizon.