The particle production at the event horizon of a black hole as gravitational Fowler-Nordheim emission in uniformly accelerated frame, in the non-relativistic scenario

Abstract

In the conventional scenario, the Hawking radiation is believed to be a tunneling process at the event horizon of the black hole. In the quantum field theoretic approach the Schwinger’s mechanism is generally used to give an explanation of this tunneling process. It is the decay of quantum vacuum into particle anti-particle pairs near the black hole surface. However, in a reference frame undergoing a uniform accelerated motion in an otherwise flat Minkowski space-time geometry, in the non-relativistic approximation, the particle production near the event horizon of a black hole may be treated as a kind of Fowler-Nordheim field emission, which is the typical electron emission process from a metal surface under the action of an external electrostatic field. This type of emission from metal surface is allowed even at extremely low temperature. It has been noticed that in one-dimensional scenario, the Schrödinger equation satisfied by the created particle (anti-particle) near the event horizon, can be reduced to a differential form which is exactly identical with that obeyed by an electron immediately after the emission from the metal surface under the action of a strong electrostatic field. The mechanism of particle production near the event horizon of a black hole is therefore identified with Schwinger process in relativistic quantum field theory, whereas in the non-relativistic scenario it may be interpreted as Fowler-Nordheim emission process, when observed from a uniformly accelerated frame.