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For a Schwarzschild black hole, a greybody factor is a mode's transmission probability through the exterior scattering potential. The spectrum of Hawking radiation at future null infinity is the thermal horizon occupation multiplied by this factor, with a sum over angular modes.

The laws of black-hole mechanics initially relate geometric quantities in a way resembling thermodynamics. Hawking radiation supplies a physical temperature: in units $c=1$, while displaying $G,\hslash ,k_B$,The Hawking temperature $T_H$ is measured with the stationary time normalized at infinity. The radiation's thermal occupation factor is physically observable; propagation to infinity also introduces greybody factors, so the distant spectrum need not be a perfect blackbody spectrum at every frequency.

The Zeroth law of black-hole mechanics says that surface gravity $\kappa$ is constant on a stationary Killing horizon under its standard hypotheses. Through the Hawking temperature, this becomes uniform equilibrium temperature. The First law of black-hole mechanics isUsing $T_H$ identifies its area term as $T_H\delta S_{\mathrm{BH}}$. Integrating $\delta S_{\mathrm{BH}}=k_B\delta A/(4G\hslash )$ gives the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy, up to an additive constant. Thus $M$ is the energy, the angular and charge terms are work terms, and the geometrical law is the ordinary thermodynamic first law with a fixed entropy normalization.

The second law of black-hole mechanics, or Hawking's area theorem, gives nondecreasing area in the classical setting with the requisite energy and predictability assumptions. It corresponds to increasing Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. Semiclassical black-hole evaporation can decrease the area: the classical null energy condition need not hold for the quantum expectation of the stress-energy tensor. The appropriate extension is the generalized second law, that $S_{\mathrm{BH}}+S_{\mathrm{outside}}$ does not decrease, with the exterior entropy and its renormalization treated consistently. Hawking's temperature identification motivates this law; thermality alone does not prove every form of it.

The third law of black-hole mechanics is the unattainability, by an admissible finite physical process, of zero surface gravity. With Hawking temperature it becomes unattainability of absolute zero. It is not the assertion that an extremal black hole has vanishing entropy: its area can remain nonzero when $\kappa =0$.

For a Schwarzschild black hole, $\kappa =1/(4GM)$ and $A=16\pi G^2{M}^2$, giving $T_H=\hslash /(8\pi k_{B}GM)$ and $S_{\mathrm{BH}}=4\pi k_{B}G{M}^2/\hslash$. Their product satisfies $T_{H}d{S}_{\mathrm{BH}}=dM$, explicitly checking the first law. Quantum radiation turns the temperature and entropy in the mechanical analogy into physical thermodynamic quantities.

Work first in units $G=c=\hslash =k_B=1$. 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 $\kappa$ 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 ${\Omega }_H$ is the horizon angular velocity and ${\Phi }_H$ its electric potential relative to infinity. The last terms are rotational and electromagnetic work, analogous to the work terms in $\delta E=T\delta S+\text{work}$. 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 $T_H=\kappa /(2\pi )$. Comparing the area term of the first law with $T_H\delta S$ gives $\delta S=\delta A/4$ for nonextremal holes, and hence the standard Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. Restoring physical constants,Here restored $\kappa$ is the physical acceleration surface gravity and ${\ell }_P^2=G\hslash /c^3$ 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 $u_j^{\mathrm{in}}$ and $u_i^{\mathrm{out}}$, normalized by $(u_i,u_j)={\delta }_{ij}$, $(u_i^{\ast },u_j^{\ast })=-{\delta }_{ij}$ and $(u_i,u_j^{\ast })=0$. 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 $a_j^{\mathrm{in}}$ 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 $U$ is the early affine null coordinate and $u$ is late retarded time at infinity. Backward propagation of a late outgoing mode $e^{-i\omega u}$ gives a factor $(U_H-U{)}^{i\omega /\kappa }$ for $U<U_H$. Its positive- and negative-frequency Fourier integrals differ by analytic continuation around the logarithmic branch. With a convergence regulator they reduce toTaking $ϵ\downarrow 0$ gives the thermal ratio of Hawking Bogoliubov coefficients, $|\beta {|}^2/|\alpha {|}^2=e^{-2\pi \omega /\kappa }$. Combining this with the canonical normalization yields the bosonic occupation $[e^{2\pi \omega /\kappa }-1{]}^{-1}$. Late-time wave packets turn formal continuum coefficients into a finite number flux.

A Schwarzschild black hole has $\kappa =1/(4M)$, so this spectrum has $T_H=1/(8\pi M)$. 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 $M^2$ and temperature as $M^{-1}$, giving $dM/du\sim -\gamma /M^2$ and a lifetime of order $M^3$, with the coefficient depending on species and transmission factors. Its negative heat capacity of a Schwarzschild black hole, $dM/d{T}_H=-8\pi M^2$, 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 $S_{\mathrm{BH}}+S_{\mathrm{outside}}$. 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.