The Hawking effect is short-lived in polymer quantization

Abstract

It is widely believed that the Hawking effect might hold clues to the possible, yet unknown, trans-Planckian physics. On the other hand, one could ask whether the effect itself might be altered by such trans-Planckian physics. We seek an answer to this question within a framework where matter field is quantized using polymer quantization, a canonical quantization technique employed in loop quantum gravity. We provide an exact derivation of the Hawking effect using canonical formulation by introducing a set of near-null coordinates which allows one to overcome the challenges posed by a Hamiltonian-based derivation of the Hawking effect. Subsequently, we show that in polymer quantization the Hawking effect is short-lived and it eventually disappears for an asymptotic future observer. Such an observer finds the duration of the Hawking effect to be few milliseconds for a solar mass black hole whereas it is few years for an ultra-massive black hole. Consequently, it provides a new way to resolve the so-called information loss paradox.