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Discrete Spectra of Charged Black Holes

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Abstract

Bekenstein proposed that the spectrum of horizon area of quantized black holes must be discrete and uniformly spaced. We examine this proposal in the context of spherically symmetric charged black holes in a general class of gravity theories. By imposing suitable boundary conditions on the reduced phase space of the theory to incorporate the thermodynamic properties of these black holes and then performing a simplifying canonical transformation, we are able to quantize the system exactly. The resulting spectra of horizon area, as well as that of charge are indeed discrete. Within this quantization scheme, near-extremal black holes (of any mass) turn out to be highly quantum objects, whereas extremal black holes do not appear in the spectrum, a result that is consistent with the postulated third law of black hole thermodynamics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Theory Department, Lebedev Physics Institute, Leninsky Prospect 53, Moscow, 117924, Russia

    Andrei Barvinsky

  2. Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, E3B 5A3

    Saurya Das

  3. Department of Physics and Winnipeg Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, R3B 2E9

    Gabor Kunstatter

Authors
  1. Andrei Barvinsky
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  2. Saurya Das
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  3. Gabor Kunstatter
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Barvinsky, A., Das, S. & Kunstatter, G. Discrete Spectra of Charged Black Holes. Foundations of Physics 32, 1851–1862 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022314632647

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