Quantum Evaporating Black Holes in Higher Dimensions

Abstract

We study an $N + 1$ dimensional generalization of the Schwarzschild black hole from the quantum mechanical viewpoint. It is shown that the mass loss rate of this higher dimensional black hole due to the black hole radiation is proportional to $1 \over r^{N-1}$ where $r$ is the radial coordinate. This fact implies that except in four dimensions the quantum formalism developed in this letter gives a different result with respect to the mass loss rate from the semiclassical formalism where the Stefan-Bolzmann formula for a blackbody radiation is used. As shown previously in the study of the four dimensional Schwarzschild metric, the wave function in this case has also quite curious features that it is singular owing to strong quantum fluctuation of the gravitational field at the singularity while completely regular in the other regions of the spacetime.