Coherent and squeezed states in black-hole evaporation

Abstract

In earlier Letters, we adopted a complex approach to quantum processes in the formation and evaporation of black holes. Taking Feynman's +iε prescription, rather than one of the more usual approaches, we calculated the quantum amplitude (not just the probability density) for final weak-field configurations following gravitational collapse to a black hole with subsequent evaporation. What we have done is to find quantum amplitudes relating to a pure state at late times following black-hole matter collapse. Such pure states are then shown to be susceptible to a description in terms of coherent and squeezed states—in practice, this description is not very different from that for the well-known highly-squeezed final state of the relic radiation background in inflationary cosmology. The simplest such collapse model involves Einstein gravity with a massless scalar field. The Feynman approach involves making the boundary-value problem for gravity and a massless scalar field well-posed. To define this, let T be the proper-time separation, measured at spatial infinity, between two space-like hypersurfaces on which initial (collapse) and final (evaporation) data are posed. Then, in this approach, one rotates T→|T|exp(−iδ) into the lower half-plane. In an adiabatic approximation, the resulting quantum amplitude may be expressed in terms of generalised coherent states of the quantum oscillator, and a physical interpretation is given. A squeezed-state representation, as above, then follows.