Quantum extension of the Kruskal spacetime

Abstract

A new description of macroscopic Kruskal black holes that incorporates the quantum geometry corrections of loop quantum gravity is presented. It encompasses both the `interior' region that contains classical singularities and the `exterior' asymptotic region. Singularities are naturally resolved by the quantum geometry effects of loop quantum gravity. The resulting quantum extension of space-time has the following features: (i) It admits an infinite number of trapped, anti-trapped and asymptotic regions; (ii) All curvature scalars have uniform (i.e., mass independent) upper bounds; (iii) In the large mass limit, all asymptotic regions of the extension have the same ADM mass; (iv) In the low curvature region (e.g., near horizons) quantum effects are negligible, as one would physically expect; and (v) Final results are insensitive to the fiducial structures that have to be introduced to construct the classical phase space description (as they must be). Previous effective theories [1-10] shared some but not all of these features. We compare and contrast our results with those of these effective theories and also with expectations based on the AdS/CFT conjecture [11]. We conclude with a discussion of limitations of our framework, especially for the analysis of evaporating black holes.