Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2009 iii Paper 56 4 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Classically, the laws of thermodynamics and black-hole thermodynamics have parallel structures, but an ordinary black hole absorbs and does not emit: its temperature would appear to be zero, despite nonzero surface gravity. Hawking radiation changes this by giving an actual temperature measurable from a thermal particle spectrum. In units ,Scattering through the exterior modifies the observed flux by greybody factors; for rotation and charge the occupation involves . These transmission and chemical-potential factors do not change the underlying Hawking temperature.
The Zeroth law of black-hole mechanics makes constant on a stationary horizon, so it gives a uniform equilibrium temperature, matching the zeroth law of thermodynamics. The full First law of black-hole mechanics isComparing it with and using the actual Hawking temperature fixesWith constants restored, . If is defined geometrically with dimensions of inverse length, ; if surface gravity is expressed as an acceleration, the equivalent formula is . The first-law comparison fixes entropy up to an additive constant. This is the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy, so the mechanical analogy becomes a quantitative thermodynamic identification, including its normalization.
The classical second law of black-hole mechanics then corresponds to increasing black-hole entropy. Quantum evaporation can reduce , because the classical energy-condition hypotheses fail, while outgoing radiation carries entropy. The appropriate thermodynamic statement is the generalized second law,Finally, the third law of black-hole mechanics, that zero surface gravity cannot be achieved by a finite physical process under its regularity assumptions, becomes the unattainability of zero temperature. It does not assert the Nernst entropy formulation: an extremal horizon can have nonzero area. Hawking radiation supplies the physical temperature, the first law fixes entropy, and the generalized second law includes both the black hole and its exterior matter.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2013 iii Paper 51 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-07
The two identities. Set . The Killing equation says . The Levi-Civita connection has symmetric lower connection indices, so they cancel in the antisymmetric difference:Use normalized antisymmetrization, soPut . Contracting with , the second term is and the third is the same after using antisymmetry. ThusRearranging proves the Killing derivative contraction identity
Restriction to a Killing horizon. On a Killing horizon, the generator is normal to the horizon as well as tangent to its null generators. Consequently there. One can see this without assuming hypersurface orthogonality away from the horizon: if the horizon is locally , write its dual one-form as near it; then on . By the definition of surface gravity, on the horizon, and lowering that relation gives . The contraction identity becomesAway from points where vanishes, cancel a nonzero component of ; at a regular bifurcation surface extend by continuity. ThereforeThis is surface gravity from the Killing derivative; it concerns the horizon, not every point in the exterior.
Static spherical metric. Choose the Killing vector . Its dual one-form is , and the first identity immediately giveswith all other components zero. HenceUsing the horizon identity and the simultaneous simple zeros,Here the positive value is chosen for a regular outer Killing horizon with on the exterior side. This is surface gravity of a static spherical horizon. A different normalization rescales surface gravity by ; when an asymptotically flat normalization is wanted, the time coordinate is chosen so at infinity.
Euclidean regularity and temperature. Let , and . On the exterior side, define the proper radial coordinate . After Wick rotation, the near-horizon metric isThe radial-time plane is a polar plane with angular coordinate . Its circumference-to-radius ratio is ; the conical singularity disappears precisely whenThis is the Euclidean black-hole regularity condition. If a signed surface gravity convention is used, the period uses .
In a thermal quantum field theory, imaginary-time periodicity is the inverse-temperature condition expressed by the KMS condition. Therefore smoothness identifies the Hawking temperaturein units , or when is measured as an inverse time. It provides the thermal interpretation of surface gravity in black-hole thermodynamics. The regular Euclidean construction describes an equilibrium thermal state; the collapse calculation of Hawking radiation in the last solution supplies the outgoing spectrum. The simple-zero hypothesis excludes an extremal black hole, for which this polar-plane argument changes.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 311 4 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Work first in units . Black-hole thermodynamics starts with the laws of black-hole mechanics. For a connected stationary regular Killing horizon, the Zeroth law of black-hole mechanics makes its surface gravity constant when the Einstein field equations and dominant energy condition hold. This parallels uniform equilibrium temperature. For neighboring stationary asymptotically flat four-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell black holes, the First law of black-hole mechanics iswhere is the horizon angular velocity and its electric potential relative to infinity. The last terms are rotational and electromagnetic work, analogous to the work terms in . The second law of black-hole mechanics, expressed by Hawking's area theorem, makes the total future horizon area nondecreasing for classical matter obeying the null energy condition and global assumptions such as strong asymptotic predictability. The third law of black-hole mechanics is an unattainability statement: subject to the usual regularity assumptions, the weak energy condition, and a bounded stress-energy tensor, no finite physical process reduces the surface gravity of a regular horizon to zero. It does not assert that extremal black holes have zero area or zero entropy.
Classical geometry alone fixes an analogy, not a nonzero physical temperature. Quantum field theory supplies Hawking temperature . Comparing the area term of the first law with gives for nonextremal holes, and hence the standard Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. Restoring physical constants,Here restored is the physical acceleration surface gravity and is the squared Planck length. The first-law comparison determines the area coefficient, leaving an additive entropy constant unspecified; the displayed formula is the usual convention. Its area scaling, rather than ordinary volume scaling, signals that the available thermodynamic degrees of freedom of a gravitating system are constrained by the horizon geometry.
Particle production explains the quantum input. For a real scalar field obeying the massless covariant wave equation, the Klein-Gordon inner product on solutions isThe wave equation makes its current divergence-free, so the product is independent of a Cauchy hypersurface when the boundary flux vanishes. Use suitably normalized wave packets or the appropriate continuum distributions. Asymptotic past and future Minkowski spacetimes give preferred positive-frequency solution mode bases and , normalized by , and . Between those regions, a nonstationary geometry generally has no preferred positive-frequency splitting.
The mode bases are related by a Bogoliubov transformation,The last identities follow from conservation of the Klein-Gordon inner product and are the canonical identities for a bosonic Bogoliubov transformation. Expanding the field in either complete basis and extracting its positive-frequency coefficient givesThus the state annihilated by every hasThis particle number from Bogoliubov coefficients is nonzero when time evolution mixes positive and negative frequencies. It describes one state as vacuum in the early particle basis and populated in the late basis; it does not require an arbitrary choice of a vacuum at each intermediate time. For a finite implementable transformation the state remains a squeezed pure quantum state. In infinitely many modes, a common unitary bosonic Fock space implementation requires additional conditions, such as the beta map being a Hilbert-Schmidt operator; finite wave packet observables need not share every global divergence of an ideal continuum calculation.
For gravitational collapse, the future is not globally Minkowski: it contains a black hole. The relevant late out-basis includes modes reaching future null infinity together with modes entering the future event horizon. Modes on infinity alone are not a complete Cauchy basis. Nevertheless the same mode-mixing calculation determines the outgoing particle flux. Near a nonextremal horizon, the logarithm in the tortoise coordinate converts regular early null coordinates into the Hawking exponential ray mapwhere is the early affine null coordinate and is late retarded time at infinity. Backward propagation of a late outgoing mode gives a factor for . Its positive- and negative-frequency Fourier integrals differ by analytic continuation around the logarithmic branch. With a convergence regulator they reduce toTaking gives the thermal ratio of Hawking Bogoliubov coefficients, . Combining this with the canonical normalization yields the bosonic occupation . Late-time wave packets turn formal continuum coefficients into a finite number flux.
A Schwarzschild black hole has , so this spectrum has . The exterior curvature potential partly reflects the outgoing modes. Its transmission probabilities are the greybody factors, giving, for one massless scalar species in the stationary late-time approximation,Thus the horizon temperature is universal, while the spectrum received at infinity is not a perfect featureless blackbody radiation spectrum. The derivation assumes the near-horizon quantum state inherited from a regular collapse vacuum and ignores rapid backreaction over the timescale of the packets. Exponentially blueshifted precursor frequencies indicate the usual short-distance assumption in the semiclassical calculation, not an independently demonstrated quantum-gravity description of the endpoint.
The outgoing positive energy flux drives black-hole evaporation. At leading order for a large isolated Schwarzschild black hole, area scales as and temperature as , giving and a lifetime of order , with the coefficient depending on species and transmission factors. Its negative heat capacity of a Schwarzschild black hole, , means that it heats up as it loses mass and cannot be in stable canonical equilibrium with an unlimited thermal reservoir. The approximation fails when quantum-gravitational scales are reached and does not fix whether the endpoint is complete evaporation, a remnant, or something else.
Area loss does not contradict the classical area theorem, because the quantum stress-energy tensor need not obey the classical null energy condition; negative horizon energy accompanies the positive outgoing flux. The appropriate thermodynamic statement is the generalized second law, involving . Finally, Hawking radiation raises the black hole information paradox: if a pure quantum state completely evaporates into an exactly thermal mixed quantum state and its partners disappear, the result conflicts with ordinary unitary time evolution. Early outgoing radiation can be mixed simply because of its entanglement with interior modes while the complete state remains a pure quantum state; that fact alone is not information loss. Resolving the fate of all correlations through the evaporation endpoint requires more than the leading semiclassical flux calculation.