A quantum optics view of Hawking’s Hawking radiation cartoon

IQSE AMO QO Seminar Series

Tuesday, January 25 11:30 AM CST

ZOOM & IQSE seminar room (MPHY 578)

Lunch will be served for IQSE members at 11:00. The talk will start around 11:30

Speaker: Dr. Jonathan S. Ben-Benjamin
IQSE, Texas A&M University

A quantum optics view of Hawking’s Hawking radiation cartoon

In 1975, Hawking published his celebrated paper [1] “Particle Creation by Black Holes,” where it has been suggested for the first time that black holes could decrease in mass by emitting particles; whereas until that time, it was held that the mass of black holes could never decrease (which is proven using classical physics [2,3]). The following year, he published an article in Scientific American where he discusses the result in a completely different way; in terms of a creation of a pair of particles, one of which devoured by a black hole, the other surviving to tell the tale. This view of Hawking radiation — as it has come to be known — has captured the public, and has become a standard way to discuss the proposed phenomenon. What is not well-known is that this view of Hawking radiation has no basis in mathematics; indeed some would even call it “pseudo-science,” and here I dub it “cartoon.” Because of its elegance, however, we asked if it could be shown to be a reasonable view. I will present a slightly different view that is somewhat analogous to Hawking’s cartoon, using a two-level atom which is held at a constant distance outside a black hole, and show that it has similarities.

J. S. Ben-Benjamin is a Post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering (IQSE) at Texas A&M University, under the directorship of Prof. Marlan Scully. He did his PhD work under Prof. Leon Cohen on noise and phase-space quantum mechanics, and now works on quantum optics and QFT in curved spacetime.

1. [1]  S. W. Hawking, “Particle Creation by Black Holes,” Comm. Math. Phys. 43 199-220 (1975).
2. [2]  S. W. Hawking, “The event horizon,” in “Black holes” Ed. C. M. DeWitt, B. S. DeWitt, New York, Gordon and Breach (1973).
3. [3] S. W. Hawking, Comm. Math. Phys. 25 235-166 (1972).
4. [4] S. W. Hawking, “The Quantum Mechanics of Black Holes,” Sci. Am. 34 (1976).

ZOOM information:

Meeting ID: 996 9666 2195
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162.255.37.11 (US West) 162.255.36.11 (US East)
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