Liouville Black Holes

Abstract

The dynamics of Liouville fields coupled to gravity are investigated by applying the principle of general covariance to the Liouville action in the context of a particular form of two-dimensional dilaton gravity. The resultant field equations form a closed system for the Liouville/gravity interaction. A large class of asymptotically flat solutions to the field equations is obtained, many of which can be interpreted as black hole solutions. The temperature of such black holes is proportional to their mass-parameters. An exact solution to the back reaction problem is obtained to one-loop order, both for conformally coupled matter fields and for the quantized metric/Liouville system. Quantum effects are shown to map the space of classical solutions into one another. A scenario for the end-point of black-hole radiation is discussed.