The universality of islands outside the horizon

TL;DR

This paper investigates the existence and properties of quantum extremal surfaces (islands) outside black hole horizons across various dimensions, revealing conditions under which they form and saturate entropy, with implications for black hole information.

Contribution

It provides a systematic calculation of QES for general D-dimensional black holes and identifies the conditions for their existence, including the effects of backreaction and upper bounds on parameters.

Findings

QES exists outside the horizon when c·G_{(D)} is sufficiently small.

Late-time radiation entropy saturates at twice the black hole entropy.

No island configuration appears when c·G_{(D)} exceeds an upper bound.

Abstract

We systematically calculate the quantum extremal surface (QES) associated with Hawking radiation for general $D$-dimensional ($D\geq2$) asymptotically flat (or AdS) eternal black holes using the island formula. We collect the Hawking radiation particles by a non-gravitational bath and find that a QES exists in the near-horizon region outside the black hole when $c\cdot G_{(D)}$ is smaller enough where $c$ is the central charge of the conformal matter and $G_{(D)}$ the $D$-dimensional Newton constant. The locations of the QES in these backgrounds are obtained and the late-time radiation entropy saturates the two times of black hole entropy. Finally, we numerically check that the no island configuration exists once $c\cdot G_{(D)}$ exceeds a certain upper bound in two-dimensional generalized dilaton theories (GDT). When $c\cdot G_{(D)}$ is close to the upper bound, the backreaction of the matter field on the background can not be neglected. We also consider the conditions of existence of the island configuration with the backreaction and prove that the upper bound also exists for the Witten black hole and Weyl-related Witten black hole.