Abstract
Black holes came into existence together with the universe through the quantum process of pair creation in the inflationary era. We present the instantons responsible for this process and calculate the pair creation rate from the no boundary proposal for the wave function of the universe. We find that this proposal leads to physically sensible results, which fit in with other descriptions of pair creation, while the tunneling proposal makes unphysical predictions. We then describe how the pair-created black holes evolve during inflation. In the classical solution, they grow with the horizon scale during the slow roll down of the inflaton field; this is shown to correspond to the flux of field energy across the horizon according to the first law of black hole mechanics. When quantum effects are taken into account, however, it is found that most black holes evaporate before the end of inflation. Finally, we consider the pair creation of magnetically charged black holes, which cannot evaporate. In standard Einstein-Maxwell theory we find that their number in the presently observable universe is exponentially small. We speculate how this conclusion may change if dilatonic theories are applied.
- Received 19 June 1996
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.54.6312
©1996 American Physical Society
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This article appears in the following collection:
The Work of Stephen Hawking in Physical Review
To mark the passing of Stephen Hawking, we gathered together his 55 papers in Physical Review D and Physical Review Letters. They probe the edges of space and time, from "Black holes and thermodynamics” to "Wave function of the Universe."
