The generalised second law and the black hole evaporation in an empty space as a nonequilibrium process

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that during black hole evaporation in empty space, the total entropy increases due to the black hole's temperature rise, even without self-interactions in the Hawking radiation, using nonequilibrium thermodynamics.

Contribution

It applies nonequilibrium thermodynamics to show entropy increase in non-self-interacting Hawking fields during black hole evaporation, extending understanding of the generalized second law.

Findings

Entropy emission rate grows faster than black hole entropy decrease.

Black hole temperature increase drives the entropy increase of Hawking radiation.

Total entropy increases despite absence of self-interactions in Hawking field.

Abstract

When a black hole is in an empty space on which there is no matter field except that of the Hawking radiation (Hawking field), then the black hole evaporates and the entropy of the black hole decreases. The generalised second law guarantees the increase of the total entropy of the whole system which consists of the black hole and the Hawking field. That is, the increase of the entropy of the Hawking field is faster than the decrease of the black hole entropy. In naive sense, one may expect that the entropy increase of the Hawking field is due to the self-interaction among the composite particles of the Hawking field, and that the "self"-relaxation of the Hawking field results in the entropy increase. Then, when one consider a non-self-interacting matter field as the Hawking field, it is obvious that the self-relaxation does not take place, and one may think that the total entropy does not increase. However, using nonequilibrium thermodynamics which has been developed recently, we find for the non-self-interacting Hawking field that the rate of entropy increase of the Hawking field (the entropy emission rate by the black hole) grows faster than the rate of entropy decrease of the black hole along the black hole evaporation in the empty space. The origin of the entropy increase of the Hawking field is the increase of the black hole temperature. Hence an understanding of the generalised second law in the context of the nonequilibrium thermodynamics is suggested; even if the self-relaxation of the Hawking field does not take place, the temperature increase of the black hole during the evaporation process causes the entropy increase of the Hawking field to result in the increase of the total entropy.