Is super-Planckian physics visible? -- Scattering of black holes in 5 dimensions

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates through numerical simulations that in 5-dimensional spacetime, black hole scattering can produce regions with curvature much smaller than the Planck length, suggesting super-Planckian physics might be observable.

Contribution

It provides the first numerical evidence that super-Planckian phenomena can be visible without horizon formation in higher-dimensional black hole scattering.

Findings

Formation of regions with curvature radius much shorter than Planck length.

Super-Planckian phenomena may be observable without horizon obstruction.

Black hole scattering in 5D can reveal quantum gravity effects.

Abstract

It may be widely believed that probing short-distance physics is limited by the presence of the Planck energy scale above which scale any information is cloaked behind a horizon. If this hypothesis is correct, we could observe quantum behavior of gravity only through a black hole of Planck mass. We numerically show that in a scattering of two black holes in the 5-dimensional spacetime, a visible domain, whose curvature radius is much shorter than the Planck length, can be formed. Our result indicates that super-Planckian phenomena may be observed without an obstruction by horizon formation in particle accelerators.