# The black hole quantum atmosphere

## TL;DR

This paper supports the idea that Hawking radiation originates from a quantum atmosphere around black holes, rather than near the horizon, which could influence our understanding of black hole information and transplanckian issues.

## Contribution

The paper provides both heuristic and detailed stress-energy tensor analyses to confirm the quantum atmosphere origin of Hawking radiation, challenging the traditional near-horizon view.

## Key findings

- Hawking quanta originate from a region around 4M outside the horizon.
- Energy density and fluxes peak at this quantum atmosphere.
- Supports the view that radiation does not come from ultra high energy near the horizon.

## Abstract

Ever since the discovery of black hole evaporation, the region of origin of the radiated quanta has been a topic of debate. Recently it was argued by Giddings that the Hawking quanta originate from a region well outside the black hole horizon by calculating the effective radius of a radiating body via the Stefan--Boltzmann law. In this paper we try to further explore this issue and end up corroborating this claim, using both a heuristic argument and a detailed study of the stress energy tensor. We show that the Hawking quanta originate from what might be called a quantum atmosphere around the black hole with energy density and fluxes of particles peaked at about $4M$, running contrary to the popular belief that these originate from the ultra high energy excitations very close to the horizon. This long distance origin of Hawking radiation could have a profound impact on our understanding of the information and transplanckian problems.