QED blue-sheet effects inside black holes

Abstract

The interaction of the unboundedly blue-shifted photons of the cosmic microwave background radiation with a physical object falling towards the inner horizon of a Reissner-Nordstrom black hole is analyzed. To evaluate this interaction we consider the QED effects up to the second order in the perturbation expansion. We then extrapolate the QED effects up to a cutoff, which we introduce at the Planckian level. (Our results are not sensitive to the cutoff energy.) We find that the energy absorbed by an infalling observer is finite, and for typical parameters would not lead to a catastrophic heating. However, this interaction would almost certainly be fatal for a human being, or other living organism of similar size. On the other hand, we find that smaller objects may survive the interaction. Our results do not provide support to the idea that the Cauchy horizon is to be regarded as the boundary of spacetime.

6 pages, LaTeX. To appear in Phys. Rev. D

References in corpus (3)

• Late-Time Behavior of Stellar Collapse and Explosions: I. Linearized Perturbations
• Classical stability and quantum instability of black-hole Cauchy horizons
• Are physical objects necessarily burnt up by the blue sheet inside a black hole?

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• The Marolf-Ori singularity inside fast spinning black holes
• Gravitational shock wave inside a steadily-accreting spherical charged black hole
• Physical objects approaching the Cauchy horizon of a rapidly rotating Kerr black hole
• Planar domain walls in black hole spacetimes