Prof. Jennie Traschen
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Nothing escapes a classical black hole; indeed this is the definition of a black hole. And yet thirty years ago, calculations of Stephen Hawking showed that black holes actually emit quantum mechanical particles, and that the particles have a thermal spectrum. This is referred to as black hole evaporation, and remains one of the fundamental predictions that a theory of quantum gravity must reproduce and explain.
In this talk we will review the classical laws of black hole mechanics, which have a striking formal analogy to the laws of thermodynamics. Then we will discuss Hawking's calculation, which turns the formal similarity into an intriguing property of black holes.