Tunnelling of charged particles from black holes

Abstract

We state and explain the total rate at which a charged non-rotating black hole emits charged particles, taking into account both Hawking radiation and Schwinger pair production simultaneously. We give concrete formulae for this emission rate in certain limits, with the greatest simplification occurring when the black hole is much larger than the particle’s Compton wavelength. We provide an interpretation of the result in terms of a tunnelling process, both through the black hole horizon and the surrounding electric field, and comment on how suppression due to tunnelling modifies the emission spectrum.