Pair creation of higher dimensional black holes on a de Sitter background

Abstract

We study in detail the quantum process in which a pair of black holes is created in a higher $D$-dimensional de Sitter (dS) background. The energy to materialize and accelerate the pair comes from the positive cosmological constant. The instantons that describe the process are obtained from the Tangherlini black hole solutions. Our pair creation rates reduce to the pair creation rate for Reissner-Nordstr\"om--dS solutions when $D=4$. Pair creation of black holes in the dS background becomes less suppressed when the dimension of the spacetime increases. The dS space is the only background in which we can discuss analytically the pair creation process of higher dimensional black holes, since the C-metric and the Ernst solutions, which describe, respectively, a pair accelerated by a string and by an electromagnetic field, are not known yet in a higher dimensional spacetime.