| Abstract: | As Hawking first discovered in 1974, black holes emit thermal radiation ("Hawking radiation") at a steady rate, due to quantum mechanical effects. Assuming the black hole is macroscopic, the evaporation process can be studied within a semiclassical framework, in which the metric is treated classically but the matter fields are treated quantum-mechanically. However, a consistent formulation of the semiclassical field equations is - so far - possible only in 2-dimensions.
Such a semiclassical model of 2-dimensional black hole was first presented by Callan, Giddings, Harvey and Strominger (CGHS). Its analytical solution is yet unknown, however it can be obtained by numerical integration of the field equations.
The numerical analysis of the CGHS model, together with several recent works which analyzed the CGHS model by different approximation methods, display some of the most interesting phenomena involved in the evaporation process of a black hole, especially, the Hawking radiation. |
