Lee-Wick Black Holes

Abstract

We derive and study an approximate static vacuum solution generated by a point-like source in a higher derivative gravitational theory with a pair of complex conjugate ghosts. The gravitational theory is local and characterized by a high derivative operator compatible with Lee-Wick unitarity. In particular, the tree-level two-point function only shows a pair of complex conjugate poles besides the massless spin two graviton. We show that singularity-free black holes exist when the mass of the source $M$ exceeds a critical value $M_{\mathrm{crit}}$. For $M>M_{\mathrm{crit}}$ the spacetime structure is characterized by an outer event horizon and an inner Cauchy horizon, while for $M=M_{\mathrm{crit}}$ we have an extremal black hole with vanishing Hawking temperature. The evaporation process leads to a remnant that approaches the zero-temperature extremal black hole state in an infinite amount of time.

5 pages, 3 figures. v2: refereed version

References in corpus (3)

• Black holes in an ultraviolet complete quantum gravity
• Counting ghosts in the "ghost-free" non-local gravity
• Can static regular black holes form from gravitational collapse?

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Quantum radiation from a sandwich black hole
• Higher order derivative operators as quantum corrections