Particle production by white holes

Robert M. Wald and Sriram Ramaswamy
Phys. Rev. D 21, 2736 – Published 15 May 1980
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Abstract

A white hole is the time reverse of a spacetime in which gravitational collapse has occurred to form a black hole. We find that in quantum field theory in a white-hole background, for any initial state of the field which is a product of a state on the horizon with a state at past null infinity, an infinite particle and energy flux occurs at future null infinity when the white-hole horizon is seen to terminate. This may be interpreted as a quantum version of the classical white-hole instability discussed by Eardley. Consequently, there appear to be considerable difficulties in incorporating white holes into a consistent picture of a thermodynamic self-gravitating quantum system. This provides evidence that the laws of quantum gravity may not be time-reversal invariant.

  • Received 18 December 1979

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.21.2736

©1980 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Robert M. Wald and Sriram Ramaswamy

  • Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637

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Issue

Vol. 21, Iss. 10 — 15 May 1980

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