Abstract
While extreme black hole spacetimes with smooth horizons are known at the level of mathematics, we argue that the horizons of physical extreme black holes are effectively singular. Test particles encounter a singularity the moment they cross the horizon, and only objects with significant back-reaction can fall across a smooth (now non-extreme) horizon. As a result, classical interior solutions for extreme black holes are theoretical fictions that need not be reproduced by any quantum mechanical model. This observation suggests that significant quantum effects might be visible outside extreme or nearly extreme black holes. It also suggests that the microphysics of such black holes may be very different from that of their Schwarzschild cousins.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Dowker F., Gauntlett J.P., Giddings S.B., Horowitz G.T.: On pair creation of extremal black holes and Kaluza-Klein monopoles. Phys. Rev. D 50, 2662 (1994) [arXiv:hep-th/9312172]
Strominger A., Vafa C.: Microscopic origin of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. Phys. Lett. B 379, 99 (1996) [arXiv:hep-th/9601029]
Mathur S.D.: The fuzzball proposal for black holes: an elementary review. Fortsch. Phys. 53, 793 (2005) [arXiv:hep-th/0502050]
Penrose R.: In: DeWitt, C.M., Wheeler, J.A. (eds) Battelle Rencontres., pp. 222. W.A. Bejamin, New York (1968)
Poisson E., Israel W.: Internal structure of black holes. Phys. Rev. D 41, 1796 (1990)
Dafermos M.: The interior of charged black holes and the problem of uniqueness in general relativity. Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 58, 445–504 (2005) [arXiv:gr-qc/0307013]
Brady P.R., Smith J.D.: Black hole singularities: a numerical approach. Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 1256 (1995) [arXiv:gr-qc/9506067]
Ori A.: Structure of the singularity inside a realistic rotating black hole. Phys. Rev. Lett. 68, 2117 (1992)
Brady P.R., Droz S., Morsink S.M.: The late-time singularity inside non-spherical black holes. Phys. Rev. D 58, 084034 (1998) [arXiv:gr-qc/9805008]
Lowe D.A.: Comment on ‘Do semiclassical zero temperature black holes exist’. Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 029001 (2001) [arXiv:gr-qc/0011053]
Acknowledgements
It is a pleasure to thank Patrick Brady, Gary Horowitz, Harvey Reall, and Eric Poisson for numerous discussions over many years of both extreme and non-extreme black holes. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No PHY08-55415, and by funds from the University of California.
Open Access
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Third Award in the 2010 Essay Competition of the Gravity Research Foundation.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
About this article
Cite this article
Marolf, D. The dangers of extremes. Gen Relativ Gravit 42, 2337–2343 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10714-010-1027-z
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10714-010-1027-z