Spinning Loop Black Holes

In this paper we construct four Kerr-like spacetimes starting from the loop black hole Schwarzschild solutions (LBH) and applying the Newman-Janis transformation. In previous papers the Schwarzschild LBH was obtained replacing the Ashtekar connection with holonomies on a particular graph in a minisuperspace approximation which describes the black hole interior. Starting from this solution, we use a Newman-Janis transformation and we specialize to two different and natural complexifications inspired from the complexifications of the Schwarzschild and Reissner-Nordstrom metrics. We show explicitly that the space-times obtained in this way are singularity free and thus there are no naked singularities. We show that the transformation move, if any, the causality violating regions of the Kerr metric far from r=0. We study the space-time structure with particular attention to the horizons shape. We conclude the paper with a discussion on a regular Reissner-Nordstrom black hole derived from the Schwarzschild LBH and then applying again the Newmann-Janis transformation.Comment: 18 pages, 18 figure

A model of radiating black hole in noncommutative geometry

The phenomenology of a radiating Schwarzschild black hole is analyzed in a noncommutative spacetime. It is shown that noncommutativity does not depend on the intensity of the curvature. Thus we legitimately introduce noncommutativity in the weak field limit by a coordinate coherent state approach. The new interesting results are the following: i) the existence of a minimal non-zero mass to which black hole can shrink; ii) a finite maximum temperature that the black hole can reach before cooling down to absolute zero; iii) the absence of any curvature singularity. The proposed scenario offers a possible solution to conventional difficulties when describing terminal phase of black hole evaporation.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

ONLINE LEARNING IN THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: TEACHER REPRESENTATIONS AND TECHNOLOGICAL INSTRUMENTS

Online teaching has become the fundamental teaching tool during the Covid-19 pandemic. In order to guarantee the right to study, educational institutions have quickly tried to change the teaching-learning methods and digital tools already possessed. This modality required wide technological skills and a reorganization of the educational objectives of the school and family context. This paper aims to present the online teaching methods implemented, the teaching profession, the pros and cons of online teaching-learning processes, and the digital tools chosen by schools and teachers to promote inclusive learning. The study involved 284 teachers from kindergarten to secondary school in the Italian context. Questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were carried out between April 2020 and June 2020. The data analyzed show that all educational institutions have adopted at distance teaching-learning devices to avoid the collapse of the scholastic system by March 2020. Teachers reported that they initially sought to reproduce face-to-face teaching strategies in the online contexts. This allowed teachers to work in their comfort zone, but did not promote long-term results. The data shows an increase in the representations of the workload and a lowering of students’ learning results. The difficulty in differentiating the school context from the family one emerged. The technological devices and platforms chosen often did not have the necessary functionalities to reproduce an in presence teaching-learning process. Sometimes the functionalities were not known by teachers to be fully applied. The family-school relationship has changed, becoming more informal and continuous during the day. All respondents agree that the teaching strategies chosen during the first phases of the pandemic were emergency strategies that have fastly attempted to promote learning and interaction. The tools and methodologies of online teaching are not the same as those of school teaching in presence. The importance of digital pedagogy and the need to include it in training programs to prepare future teachers for the light in the new social reality is fundamental

Minimal Scales from an Extended Hilbert Space

We consider an extension of the conventional quantum Heisenberg algebra, assuming that coordinates as well as momenta fulfil nontrivial commutation relations. As a consequence, a minimal length and a minimal mass scale are implemented. Our commutators do not depend on positions and momenta and we provide an extension of the coordinate coherent state approach to Noncommutative Geometry. We explore, as toy model, the corresponding quantum field theory in a (2+1)-dimensional spacetime. Then we investigate the more realistic case of a (3+1)-dimensional spacetime, foliated into noncommutative planes. As a result, we obtain propagators, which are finite in the ultraviolet as well as the infrared regime.Comment: 16 pages, version which matches that published on CQ

Self-completeness and spontaneous dimensional reduction

A viable quantum theory of gravity is one of the biggest challenges facing physicists. We discuss the confluence of two highly expected features which might be instrumental in the quest of a finite and renormalizable quantum gravity -- spontaneous dimensional reduction and self-completeness. The former suggests the spacetime background at the Planck scale may be effectively two-dimensional, while the latter implies a condition of maximal compression of matter by the formation of an event horizon for Planckian scattering. We generalize such a result to an arbitrary number of dimensions, and show that gravity in higher than four dimensions remains self-complete, but in lower dimensions it is not. In such a way we established an "exclusive disjunction" or "exclusive or" (XOR) between the occurrence of self-completeness and dimensional reduction, with the goal of actually reducing the unknowns for the scenario of the physics at the Planck scale. Potential phenomenological implications of this result are considered by studying the case of a two-dimensional dilaton gravity model resulting from dimensional reduction of Einstein gravity.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures; v3: final version in press on Eur. Phys. J. Plu

Regularization ambiguity and van der Waals black hole in 2 + 1 dimensions

Charged black holes in a (2+1 )-dimensional anti-de Sitter space-time suffer from some limitations such as the ambiguity in the definition of the mass and the bad short distance behavior. In this paper we present a way to resolve such issues. By extending the parameter space of the BTZ geometry, we properly identify the integration constants in order to remove the conical singularity sitting at the origin. In such a way we obtain a well defined Minkowski limit and horizons also in the case of de Sitter background space. On the thermodynamic side, we obtain a proper internal energy, by invoking the consistency with the Area Law, even if the mass parameter does not appear in the metric coefficients. As a further improvement, we show that it is sufficient to assume a finite size of the electric charge to obtain a short scale regular geometry. The resulting solution, generalizing the charged BTZ metric, is dual to a van der Waals gas

The Hawking-Page crossover in noncommutative anti-deSitter space

We study the problem of a Schwarzschild-anti-deSitter black hole in a noncommutative geometry framework, thought to be an effective description of quantum-gravitational spacetime. As a first step we derive the noncommutative geometry inspired Schwarzschild-anti-deSitter solution. After studying the horizon structure, we find that the curvature singularity is smeared out by the noncommutative fluctuations. On the thermodynamics side, we show that the black hole temperature, instead of a divergent behavior at small scales, admits a maximum value. This fact implies an extension of the Hawking-Page transition into a van der Waals-like phase diagram, with a critical point at a critical cosmological constant size in Plank units and a smooth crossover thereafter. We speculate that, in the gauge-string dictionary, this corresponds to the confinement "critical point" in number of colors at finite number of flavors, a highly non-trivial parameter that can be determined through lattice simulations.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figure, 1 table, version matching that published on JHE

Micro black holes in the laboratory

The possibility of creating microscopic black holes is one of the most exciting predictions for the LHC, with potentially major consequences for our current understanding of physics. We briefly review the theoretical motivation for micro black hole production, and our understanding of their subsequent evolution. Recent work on modelling the radiation from quantum-gravity-corrected black holes is also discussed