Ten shades of black

Abstract

The holographic principle has taught us that, as far as their entropy content is concerned, black holes in (3 + 1)-dimensional curved spacetimes behave as ordinary thermodynamic systems in flat (2 + 1)-dimensional spacetimes. In this paper, we point out that the opposite behavior can also be observed in black-hole physics. To show this we study the quantum Hawking evaporation of near-extremal Reissner–Nordström (RN) black holes. We first point out that the black-hole radiation spectrum departs from the familiar radiation spectrum of genuine (3 + 1)-dimensional perfect black-body emitters. In particular, the would be black-body thermal spectrum is distorted by the curvature potential which surrounds the black-hole and effectively blocks the emission of low-energy quanta. Taking into account the energy-dependent gray-body factors which quantify the imprint of passage of the emitted radiation quanta through the black-hole curvature potential, we reveal that the (3 + 1)-dimensional black holes effectively behave as perfect black-body emitters in a flat (9 + 1)-dimensional spacetime.