Abstract
The problem of evaluating the cross section of production of large black holes in particle collisions at trans-Planckian energies is revisited. It is argued that the geometric cross section claimed in the literature would in fact lead to an exponentially growing with energy total cross section dominated by production of many "small" black holes. On the other hand, the semiclassical treatment of this problem, leading to an exponentially suppressed cross section for production of large black holes, requires that in the classical limit the cross section vanishes for massless colliding particles. The latter behavior can in principle be probed by numerical simulations in the classical general relativity.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 376-382 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Physics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics |
| Volume | 524 |
| Issue number | 3-4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 10 2002 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:I acknowledge the hospitality of the Aspen Center for Physics, where initial estimates for this paper were done. This work is supported in part by DOE under the grant number DE-FG02-94ER40823.