Regular Black Holes From Pure Gravity

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that higher-curvature corrections in pure gravity theories can resolve Schwarzschild singularities in higher dimensions, producing regular black hole solutions without matter fields, with universal thermodynamic properties.

Contribution

It provides a general construction showing how infinite higher-curvature corrections lead to regular black holes as vacuum solutions in higher-dimensional gravity.

Findings

Regular black holes are obtained as vacuum solutions without matter.

Theories include an infinite tower of higher-curvature corrections.

Black hole thermodynamics can be universally analyzed.

Abstract

We show via an explicit construction how an infinite tower of higher-curvature corrections generically leads to a resolution of the Schwarzschild singularity in any spacetime dimension $D \ge 5$. The theories we consider have two key properties that ensure the results are general and robust: (1) they provide a basis for (vacuum) gravitational effective field theory in five and higher-dimensions, (2) for each value of the mass, they have a unique static spherically symmetric solution. We present several exact solutions of the theories that include the Hayward black hole and metrics similar to the Bardeen and Dymnikova ones. Unlike previous constructions, these regular black holes arise as vacuum solutions, as we include no matter fields whatsoever in our analysis. We show how the black hole thermodynamics can be studied in a completely universal and unambiguous way for all solutions.