The Generalized Uncertainty Principle and Black Hole Remnants

TL;DR

This paper explores how the generalized uncertainty principle could prevent small black holes from completely evaporating, suggesting the existence of stable black hole remnants instead of total evaporation.

Contribution

It introduces the idea that the generalized uncertainty principle can halt black hole evaporation, proposing a dynamic mechanism for black hole remnants.

Findings

Generalized uncertainty principle may prevent complete black hole evaporation.

Black hole remnants could be stable due to quantum gravitational effects.

The mechanism is analogous to the stability of the hydrogen atom against collapse.

Abstract

In the current standard viewpoint small black holes are believed to emit radiation as black bodies at the Hawking temperature, at least until they reach Planck size, after which their fate is open to conjecture. A cogent argument against the existence of remnants is that, since no evident quantum number prevents it, black holes should radiate completely away to photons and other ordinary stable particles and vacuum, like any unstable quantum system. Here we argue the contrary, that the generalized uncertainty principle may prevent their total evaporation in exactly the same way that the uncertainty principle prevents the hydrogen atom from total collapse: the collapse is prevented, not by symmetry, but by dynamics, as a minimum size and mass are approached.