Black Holes and Quantum Mechanics

Abstract

The motion of a particle near the RN black hole horizon is described by conformal mechanics. Models of this type have no ground state with vanishing energy. This problem was resolved in past by a redefinition of the Hamiltonian which breaks translational time invariance but gives a normalizable ground state. We show that this change of the Hamiltonian is a quantum mechanical equivalent of the change of coordinates near the black hole horizon removing the singularity. The new Hamiltonian of quantum mechanics is identified as an operator of a rotation between 2 time-like coordinates of the adS hypersurface which translates global time. Therefore conformal quantum mechanics may eventually help to resolve the puzzles of the classical black hole physics.

7 pages, Latex. To be published in proceedings of the 22nd Johns Hopkins Workshop, Gothenburg, 1998