Related papers: Tensile Strength and the Mining of Black Holes
We discuss how cosmic strings can be used to mine energy from black holes. A string attached to the black hole gives rise to an additional channel for the energy release. It is demonstrated that when a string crosses the event horizon, its…
Black holes in general relativity are characterized by their trapping horizon, a one-way membrane that can be crossed only inwards. The existence of trapping horizons in astrophysical black holes can be tested observationally using a…
Higher-dimensional scenarios allow for the formation of mini-black holes from TeV-scale particle collisions. The purpose of this paper is to review and compare different methods for the estimate of the total gravitational energy emitted in…
To explain black hole thermodynamics in quantum gravity, one must introduce constraints to ensure that a black hole is actually present. I show that for a large class of black holes, such ``horizon constraints'' allow the use of conformal…
In this paper, a new quantum mechanical method to extract energy from black holes with contracting horizons is proposed. The method is based on a gedanken experiment on quantum energy teleportation (QET), which has been recently proposed in…
In gravitational collapse leading to black hole formation, trapping horizons typically develop inside the contracting matter. Classically, an ingoing trapping horizon moves towards the centre where it reaches a curvature singularity, while…
We consider spherically-symmetric black holes in semiclassical gravity. For a collapsing radiating thin shell we derive a sufficient condition on the exterior geometry that ensures that a black hole is not formed. This is also a sufficient…
If a system falls through a black hole horizon, then its information is lost to an observer at infinity. But we argue that the {\it accessible} information is lost {\it before} the horizon is crossed. The temperature of the hole limits…
We discuss some of the drawbacks of using event horizons to define black holes and suggest ways in which black holes can be described without event horizons, using trapping horizons. We show that these trapping horizons give rise to…
For a test particle approaching a rapidly rotating black hole we find a range of values of the particle's energy and angular momentum, on the order of 1\% or more of the corresponding values of the hole, such that three conditions are…
Hawking radiation can be regarded as a spontaneous and continuous creation of virtual particle-antiparticle pairs outside the event horizon of a black hole where strong tidal forces prevent the annihilation: the particle escapes to infinity…
Recently, Almheiri et. al. argued, via a delicate thought experiment, that it is not consistent to simultaneosuly require that (a) Hawking radiation is pure, (b) effective field theory is valid outside a stretched horizon and (c) infalling…
To derive black hole thermodynamics in any quantum theory of gravity, one must introduce constraints that ensure that a black hole is actually present. For a large class of black holes, the imposition of such ``horizon constraints'' allows…
We employ the recently proposed formalism of the "horizon wave-function" to investigate the emergence of a horizon in models of black holes as Bose-Einstein condensates of gravitons. We start from the Klein-Gordon equation for a massless…
We set to weigh the black holes at their event horizons in various spacetimes and obtain masses which are substantially higher than their asymptotic values. In each case, the horizon mass of a Schwarzschild, Reissner-Nordstr{\"o}m, or Kerr…
A derivation of the Hawking effect is given which avoids reference to field modes above some cutoff frequency $\omega_c\gg M^{-1}$ in the free-fall frame of the black hole. To avoid reference to arbitrarily high frequencies, it is necessary…
Analysis of several gedanken experiments indicates that black hole complementarity cannot be ruled out on the basis of known physical principles. Experiments designed by outside observers to disprove the existence of a quantum-mechanical…
The new, rapidly developing field of theoretical research --- studies of dark energy interacting with black holes (and, in particular, accreting onto black holes) --- is reviewed. The term `dark energy' is meant to cover a wide range of…
The central challenge in trying to resolve the firewall paradox is to identify excitations in the near-horizon zone of a black hole that can carry information without injuring a freely falling observer. By analyzing the problem from the…
As space expands, the energy density in black holes increases relative to that of radiation, providing us with motivation to consider scenarios in which the early universe contained a significant abundance of such objects. In this study, we…