The Renormalized Stress Tensor in Kerr Space-Time: Numerical Results for the Hartle-Hawking Vacuum

Abstract

We show that the pathology which afflicts the Hartle-Hawking vacuum on the Kerr black hole space-time can be regarded as due to rigid rotation of the state with the horizon in the sense that when the region outside the speed-of-light surface is removed by introducing a mirror, there is a state with the defining features of the Hartle-Hawking vacuum. In addition, we show that when the field is in this state, the expectation value of the energy-momentum stress tensor measured by an observer close to the horizon and rigidly rotating with it corresponds to that of a thermal distribution at the Hawking temperature rigidly rotating with the horizon.