Abstract
Wheeler has conjectured that black holes should have no well-defined baryon number, and that as a result the law of conservation of baryons should be transcended in black-hole physics. We show here that a static black hole cannot have any exterior classical scalar or massive vector fields. We consider the modifications that would arise from a quantum-theoretical treatment, and we conclude that such a black hole cannot interact with the exterior world via virtual mesons such as the and . Because of this we find no way for external measurements to assign unambiguously a baryon number to such a black hole in agreement with Wheeler's prediction.
- Received 17 May 1971
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.5.1239
©1972 American Physical Society