On the Universality of the Hawking Effect

Addressing the question of whether the Hawking effect depends on degrees of freedom at ultra-high (e.g., Planckian) energies/momenta, we propose three rather general conditions on these degrees of freedom under which the Hawking effect is reproduced to lowest order. As a generalization of Corley’s results, we present a rather general model based on non-linear dispersion relations satisfying these conditions together with a derivation of the Hawking effect for that model. However, we also demonstrate counter-examples, which do not appear to be unphysical or artificial, displaying strong deviations from Hawking’s result. Therefore, whether real black holes emit Hawking radiation remains an open question and could give non-trivial information about Planckian physics. PACS: 04.70.Dy, 04.62.+v, 04.60.-m, 04.20.Cv.