Source Vacuum Fluctuations of Black Hole Radiance

TL;DR

This paper investigates the origin of Hawking radiation from vacuum fluctuations, proposing that their properties challenge existing models and imply the necessity of massive fields for emission, with implications for black hole physics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of vacuum fluctuations using Aharonov weak values and suggests the need for massive fields to explain Hawking radiation.

Findings

Vacuum fluctuations carry transplanckian energies localized on cisplanckian scales.

Conventional field theories cannot fully account for these fluctuations' gravitational effects.

Emission of Hawking photons likely involves massive fields, supporting certain conjectures in quantum gravity.

Abstract

The emergence of Hawking radiation from vacuum fluctuations is analyzed in conventional field theories and their energy content is defined through the Aharonov weak value concept. These fluctuations travel in flat space-time and carry transplanckian energies sharply localized on cisplanckian distances. We argue that these features cannot accommodate gravitational nonlinearities. We suggest that the very emission of Hawking photons from tamed vacuum fluctuations requires the existence of an exploding set of massive fields. These considerations corroborate some conjectures of Susskind and may prove relevant for the back-reaction problem and for the unitarity issue.