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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 5: Semi-Classical Gravity 1

AGPhil 5.2: Invited Talk

Tuesday, March 19, 2024, 10:15–11:00, PTB SR AvHB

The Hawking Effect, Its Desiderata and Its Discontents — •Erik Curiel — Lichtenberg Group for History and Philosophy of Physics Universität Bonn — Black Hole Initiative, Harvard University

I give a heuristic overview of the emission of radiation by black holes when quantum effects are taken into account---the "Hawking effect". I will not work through any particular derivation of the effect in detail, as the rough, intuitive ones tend to be badly misleading, and the precise, rigorous ones are too technically demanding given the constraints of this talk. I will rather sketch the basic ingredients any derivation requires, the choices one must make in constructing a derivation, including what exactly it is one hopes to show, and discuss physical and conceptual problems those ingredients and conclusions raise and face. I focus on apparent inconsistencies among several of the most popular approaches, and how they may (or may not) be resolved. I also discuss whether or not the different derivations can be understood as all sharing a common core of empirical content. I conclude with some thoughts on how to understand the possible bearing of these issues on the widespread use of black hole thermodynamics in general, and the Hawking effect in particular, as a guide in the search for a theory of quantum gravity.

Keywords: Hawking effect; black hole evaporation; quantum gravity; quantum field theory on curved spacetime; semi-classical gravity