Use and normalize the stationary time at infinity. For a regular stationary, asymptotically flat electrovacuum black hole, the Kerr-Newman metric has
Initially assume and , so the outer Killing horizon is nondegenerate. Its surface gravity, angular velocity, electric potential and area are
These are horizon quantities for the generator .
The laws of black-hole mechanics provide the first reason to regard and area as thermodynamic variables. The Zeroth law of black-hole mechanics makes constant on an equilibrium horizon. The first law for the Kerr-Newman family reads
For example, write the horizon relation as and use ; differentiating eliminates and to give this law. The last two terms are rotational and electric work. The classical second law of black-hole mechanics says that area cannot decrease under the null energy condition and appropriate global horizon assumptions. The third law of black-hole mechanics concerns unattainability of a zero-surface-gravity regular horizon by a finite physical process.
This analogy alone does not determine the temperature scale: if entropy were , the first law would only give . The decisive input is quantum field theory in the collapsing or stationary background. In a collapse vacuum that is regular for freely falling observers, the late outgoing retarded time and a regular affine null coordinate satisfy the Hawking exponential ray map
An outgoing mode therefore behaves as . Continuing this power through the horizon changes its amplitude by the factor . Its positive- and negative-frequency decomposition consequently has the thermal ratio of Hawking Bogoliubov coefficients
Combining that ratio with bosonic normalization gives a Planck occupation . The fermionic normalization instead gives the corresponding Fermi factor. Thus Hawking radiation fixes
For rotating charged modes, the horizon energy is , so the emission spectrum contains the same temperature with angular-momentum and charge chemical potentials. Exterior scattering supplies greybody factors; it changes the received flux, not the horizon temperature. Superradiant bosonic modes require the usual signed absorption factor, and a globally regular thermal bath need not exist throughout an asymptotically flat rotating exterior. The collapse-state emission argument is the relevant one.
A complementary check is the Euclidean black-hole regularity condition. The local corotating nondegenerate horizon geometry is Rindler-like:
Smoothness at requires to have period . Imaginary-time periodicity is precisely inverse temperature, agreeing with the radiation calculation. Matching the resulting temperature to the first law fixes the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy to . The generalized second law then uses : the classical area theorem alone does not apply to the negative-energy quantum flux responsible for evaporation.
Substitution gives the Kerr-Newman horizon temperature
It reduces to for a Schwarzschild black hole. The nonextremal limit towards gives zero temperature. At exact extremality the Euclidean horizon is degenerate, so the elementary conical-period argument does not itself fix a period; zero temperature here is the limiting semiclassical result. The reasoning assumes ordinary Einstein–Maxwell dynamics, a regular horizon, the stated normalization at infinity and a regime where quantum fields on a slowly evolving classical geometry are a useful approximation. The mechanical laws, radiation spectrum and Euclidean regularity agree under these assumptions, which is substantially stronger evidence than the classical analogy alone.