Investigation of the black-hole quantum atmosphere from the effective proper temperature

Abstract

Hawking radiation may be regarded as originating at the event horizon; however, its spatial origin can instead be distributed over a finite region outside the horizon. In this paper, using an effective proper temperature, we investigate the quantum atmosphere within a tractable model based on the two-dimensional radial sector of $D$-dimensional Schwarzschild black holes. In the Hartle--Hawking state, the proper temperature is derived from the first law of thermodynamics in the presence of the conformal anomaly associated with Hawking radiation. In the Unruh state, we decompose the proper temperature into two chiral temperatures, $T_{\rm L}$ and $T_{\rm R}$, associated with the ingoing and outgoing fluxes, respectively. Demonstrating $T_{\rm R}$ as the effective proper temperature characterizing the outgoing Hawking flux with the proper temperature in the Hartle-Hawking state, we define the atmospheric radius effectively as the radial position at which the effective proper temperature attains its maximum. We then numerically compute the atmospheric radius of the quantum atmosphere for various spacetime dimensions and show that it decreases monotonically as the number of spacetime dimensions increases. In the large-dimensional limit, we find that the atmospheric radius remains separated from the horizon by a finite radial factor, indicating that the quantum atmosphere can persist as an extended exterior region in any dimension.