Cosmological Constant and Vacuum Zero Point Energy in Black Hole Backgrounds

TL;DR

This paper investigates the quantum vacuum zero point energy in black hole backgrounds, revealing its scaling behavior, the existence of an upper mass limit for black holes in this context, and the development of inhomogeneities on small scales.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of vacuum zero point energy in Schwarzschild and Nariai black hole backgrounds, highlighting new scaling relations and mass limits.

Findings

Vacuum energy density matches flat background values near black holes.

An upper mass limit for black holes in vacuum zero point energy is identified.

Inhomogeneities in energy distribution develop on sub-horizon scales.

Abstract

We study the quantum vacuum zero point energy in the Schwarzschild black hole as well as in the Nariai limit of the dS-Schwarzschild backgrounds. We show that the regularized vacuum energy density near the black hole and also in the Nariai setup match exactly with the corresponding value in the flat background, scaling with the fourth power of the mass of the quantum field. The horizon radius of the dS space created from the vacuum zero point energy introduces a new length scale which should be compared with the black hole horizon radius. There is an upper limiting mass for the black hole immersed in the vacuum zero point energy which is determined by the mass of the Nariai metric associated to the dS background constructed from zero point energy. We calculate the variance in the distribution of the vacuum zero point energy and the density contrast and show that it develops strong inhomogeneities on sub-horizon scales.