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I have a difficulty with understanding Hawking radiation. So far, I have "understood" (I can be wrong!), that the intense gravity of a black hole can split pairs of virtual particles so that one escapes the black hole, while one is absorbed (is that accurate?).

In QFT terms, I am assuming that this means gravity somehow splits the fields present in the vacuum, from which I'm concluding that we would have many types of particles in Hawking radiation, not just photons: is that accurate, or is it nonsense because the gravitational field doesn't interact with the other fields?

Note: my exposure to QFT is rudimentary, mostly focused on the EM field.

Qmechanic
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Frank
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1 Answers1

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No, a black hole does not radiate light. We see black holes because of the radiation given off by the material that the black hole is feeding upon.

Hawking Radiation is formed when a photon near the event horizon undergoes pair production and creates an electron and its anti-particle the positron. One of the particles is absorbed by the black hole and the other is emitted.

hooch
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