Nonsingular Black Holes and Degrees of Freedom in Quantum Gravity

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that quantum gravity models of spherically symmetric space-times can eliminate classical singularities and reduce the degrees of freedom to a single physical parameter, the mass, offering insights into quantum black holes.

Contribution

It shows how quantum geometry removes singularities and simplifies the degrees of freedom in spherically symmetric models, connecting to quantum cosmology.

Findings

Classical singularities are absent in quantum models.

The reduction from many degrees of freedom to one (mass) is achieved.

Insights into initial conditions in quantum cosmology are provided.

Abstract

Spherically symmetric space-times provide many examples for interesting black hole solutions, which classically are all singular. Following a general program, space-like singularities in spherically symmetric quantum geometry, as well as other inhomogeneous models, are shown to be absent. Moreover, one sees how the classical reduction from infinitely many kinematical degrees of freedom to only one physical one, the mass, can arise, where aspects of quantum cosmology such as the problem of initial conditions play a role.