Can black holes and naked singularities be detected in accelerators?

We study the conditions for the existence of black holes that can be produced in colliders at TeV-scale if the space-time is higher dimensional. On employing the microcanonical picture, we find that their life-times strongly depend on the details of the model. If the extra dimensions are compact (ADD model), microcanonical deviations from thermality are in general significant near the fundamental TeV mass and tiny black holes decay more slowly than predicted by the canonical expression, but still fast enough to disappear almost instantaneously. However, with one warped extra dimension (RS model), microcanonical corrections are much larger and tiny black holes appear to be (meta)stable. Further, if the total charge is not zero, we argue that naked singularities do not occur provided the electromagnetic field is strictly confined on an infinitely thin brane. However, they might be produced in colliders if the effective thickness of the brane is of the order of the fundamental length scale (~1/TeV).Comment: 6 pages, RevTeX 3, 1 figure and 1 table, important changes and addition

A general class of braneworld wormholes

The brane cosmology scenario is based on the idea that our Universe is a 3-brane embedded in a five-dimensional bulk. In this work, a general class of braneworld wormholes is explored with $R\neq 0$, where $R$ is the four dimensional Ricci scalar, and specific solutions are further analyzed. A fundamental ingredient of traversable wormholes is the violation of the null energy condition (NEC). However, it is the effective total stress energy tensor that violates the latter, and in this work, the stress energy tensor confined on the brane, threading the wormhole, is imposed to satisfy the NEC. It is also shown that in addition to the local high-energy bulk effects, nonlocal corrections from the Weyl curvature in the bulk may induce a NEC violating signature on the brane. Thus, braneworld gravity seems to provide a natural scenario for the existence of traversable wormholes.Comment: 6 pages, Revtex4. V2: comments and references added, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Energy Absorption by the Dilaton Field around a Rotating Black Hole in a Binary System

In this paper we analyze a binary system consisting of a star and a rotating black hole. The electromagnetic radiation emitted by the star interacts with the background of the black hole and stimulates the production of dilaton waves. We then estimate the energy transferred from the electromagnetic radiation of the star to the dilaton field as a function of the frequency. The resulting picture is a testable signature of the existence of dilaton fields as predicted by string theory in an astrophysical context.Comment: REVTeX, 13 pages, 3 figure

Horizon wave-function for single localized particles: GUP and quantum black hole decay

A localised particle in Quantum Mechanics is described by a wave packet in position space, regardless of its energy. However, from the point of view of General Relativity, if the particle's energy density exceeds a certain threshold, it should be a black hole. In order to combine these two pictures, we introduce a horizon wave-function determined by the particle wave-function in position space, which eventually yields the probability that the particle is a black hole. The existence of a minimum mass for black holes naturally follows, albeit not in the form of a sharp value around the Planck scale, but rather like a vanishing probability that a particle much lighter than the Planck mass be a black hole. We also show that our construction entails an effective Generalised Uncertainty Principle (GUP), simply obtained by adding the uncertainties coming from the two wave-functions associated to a particle. Finally, the decay of microscopic (quantum) black holes is also described in agreement with what the GUP predicts.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, extended version of arXiv:1305.3195 with new results about the GUP and black hole decay, clarifications about black hole decay adde

Brane-world stars and (microscopic) black holes

We study stars in the brane-world by employing the principle of minimal geometric deformation and find that brane-world black hole metrics with a tidal charge are consistently recovered in a suitable limit. This procedure allows us to determine the tidal charge as a function of the black hole ADM mass (and brane tension). A minimum mass for semiclassical microscopic black holes can then be derived, with a relevant impact for the description of black hole events at the LHC.Comment: LaTeX, 11 pages, 2 figures. Final version to appear in PL

Quantum Harmonic Black Holes

Inspired by the recent conjecture that black holes are condensates of gravitons, we investigate a simple model for the black hole degrees of freedom that is consistent both from the point of view of Quantum mechanics and of General Relativity. Since the two perspectives should "converge" into a unified picture for small, Planck size, objects, we expect our construction is a useful step for understanding the physics of microscopic, quantum black holes. In particular, we show that a harmonically trapped condensate gives rise to two horizons, whereas the extremal case (corresponding to a remnant with vanishing Hawking temperature) naturally falls out of its spectrum.Comment: 7 pages, no figures. Clarifications and comments adde