Microscopic Black Hole Production in TeV-Scale Gravity

Abstract

Models with extra spatial dimensions and TeV-scale gravity offer the first opportunity to test the conjecture of black hole formation in trans-Planckian energy scattering with small impact parameters. After a brief review of gravitational scattering at ultrahigh energies and scenarios of TeV-scale gravity, search strategies at the LHC, at the Pierre Auger (cosmic ray) Observatory and at the neutrino telescopes AMANDA/IceCube are illustrated with the simplest but nevertheless representative example: production of Schwarzschild black holes and their observation via Hawking radiation in the large extra dimension scenario. Some more general features of the production of higher-dimensional black holes and/or uncertainties in the estimates are also outlined.