Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Baptista, Pedro Duarte, Vañó-Viñuales, Alex, del Río, Adrían
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.18610
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866911454780719104
author Baptista, Pedro Duarte
Vañó-Viñuales, Alex
del Río, Adrían
author_facet Baptista, Pedro Duarte
Vañó-Viñuales, Alex
del Río, Adrían
contents The formation of black holes by the gravitational collapse of stars is known to spontaneously excite particle pairs out of the quantum vacuum. For the canonical vacuum state at past null infinity, the expected number of particles received at future null infinity can be obtained in full closed form at sufficiently late times. However, for intermediate times, or for more complicated astrophysical processes (e.g. binary black hole mergers), the problem is technically challenging and has not yet been resolved. We develop here a numerical approach to study scattering problems of massless quantum fields in asymptotically flat spacetimes, based on the hyperboloidal slice method used in numerical relativity and perturbation theory. This promising approach can reach both past and future null infinities, and therefore it has the potential to address the Hawking scattering problem more rigorously than evolution on the usual Cauchy slices. We test this approach with some dynamical toy models in Minkowski using effective potentials that mimic the effects of gravity, and compute the spectrum of particles received at future null infinity. We finally discuss future prospects for applying this framework in more relevant gravitational scenarios.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_18610
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A numerical approach to particle creation in accelerating toy models
Baptista, Pedro Duarte
Vañó-Viñuales, Alex
del Río, Adrían
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
The formation of black holes by the gravitational collapse of stars is known to spontaneously excite particle pairs out of the quantum vacuum. For the canonical vacuum state at past null infinity, the expected number of particles received at future null infinity can be obtained in full closed form at sufficiently late times. However, for intermediate times, or for more complicated astrophysical processes (e.g. binary black hole mergers), the problem is technically challenging and has not yet been resolved. We develop here a numerical approach to study scattering problems of massless quantum fields in asymptotically flat spacetimes, based on the hyperboloidal slice method used in numerical relativity and perturbation theory. This promising approach can reach both past and future null infinities, and therefore it has the potential to address the Hawking scattering problem more rigorously than evolution on the usual Cauchy slices. We test this approach with some dynamical toy models in Minkowski using effective potentials that mimic the effects of gravity, and compute the spectrum of particles received at future null infinity. We finally discuss future prospects for applying this framework in more relevant gravitational scenarios.
title A numerical approach to particle creation in accelerating toy models
topic General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.18610