Hawking radiation

Renaud Parentani (1) , Philippe Spindel (2)

1 LPT - Laboratoire de Physique Théorique d'Orsay [Orsay]
2 Service de Mécanique et Gravitation

Hawking radiation is the thermal radiation predicted to be spontaneously emitted by black holes. It arises from the steady conversion of quantum vacuum fluctuations into pairs of particles, one of which escaping at infinity while the other is trapped inside the black hole horizon. It is named after the physicist Stephen Hawking who derived its existence in 1974. This radiation reduces the mass of black holes and is therefore also known as black hole evaporation.

Domaines: Physique des Hautes Energies - Théorie [hep-th]; Relativité Générale et Cosmologie Quantique [gr-qc]

Renaud Parentani, Philippe Spindel. Hawking radiation. Scholarpedia, 2011, 6 (12), pp.6958. ⟨10.4249/scholarpedia.6958⟩. ⟨hal-00662308⟩