De Sitter black holes as constrained states in the Euclidean path integral

Abstract

Schwarzschild-de Sitter black holes have two horizons that are at different temperatures for generic values of the black hole mass. Since the horizons are out of equilibrium, the solutions do not admit a smooth Euclidean continuation, and it is not immediately clear what role they play in the gravitational path integral. We show that Euclidean Schwarzschild-de Sitter is a genuine saddle point of a certain constrained path integral, providing a consistent Euclidean computation of the probability ∼e-(SdS-SSdS) to find a black hole in the de Sitter bath.