A note on the Hawking radiation calculated by the quasi-classical tunneling method

TL;DR

This paper discusses subtleties and issues, such as the factor of 2 problem, in the quasi-classical tunneling method for calculating Hawking radiation, and explores conditions under which this method is valid.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the factor of 2 problem, the role of absorption contributions, and the conditions for the validity of the tunneling method in Hawking radiation calculations.

Findings

The factor of 2 problem can be viewed as neglecting P(absorption) contributions.

The tunneling method aligns with black hole thermodynamics when the process is reversible.

Back-reaction effects modify Hawking radiation in a way consistent with unitarity.

Abstract

Since Parikh and Wilczek's tunneling method was proposed, there have been many generalizations, such as its application to massive charged particles' tunneling and other spacetimes. Moreover, a variant tunneling method was also recently proposed by Angheben et al that it was independent of coordinates. However, there are some subtleties in the calculation of Hawking radiation, and particularly is the so-called factor of 2 problem during calculating the Hawking temperature. The most popular opinion on this problem is that it is just a problem of the choice of coordinates. However, following other treatments we show that we can also consider this problem as a problem that we do not consider the contribution from P(absorption). Moreover, we also give some subtleties in the balance method and some comparisons with other treatments. In addition, as Parikh and Wilczek's original works have showed that if one takes the tunneling particles' back-reaction into account, the Hawking radiation would be modified, and this modification is underlying consistent with the unitary theory, we further find that this modification is also underlying correlated with the laws of black hole thermodynamics. Furthermore, we show that this tunneling method may be valid just when the tunneling process is reversible.