The issue concerning semi-classical methods recently developed in deriving the conditions for Hawking radiation as tunneling, is revisited and applied also to rotating black hole solutions as well as to the extremal cases. It is noticed how the tunneling method fixes the temperature of extremal black hole to be zero, unlike the Euclidean regularity method that allows an arbitrary compactification period. A comparison with other approaches is presented. *

The Einstein's equations with a negative cosmological constant admit solutions which are asymptotically anti-de Sitter space. Matter fields in anti-de Sitter space can be in stable equilibrium even if the potential energy is unbounded from below, violating the weak energy condition. Hence there is no fundamental reason that black hole's horizons should have spherical topology. In anti-de Sitter space the Einstein's equations admit black hole solutions where the horizon can be a Riemann surface with genus $g$. The case $g=0$ is the asymptotically anti-de Sitter black hole first studied by Hawking-Page, which has spherical topology. The genus one black hole has a new free parameter entering the metric, the conformal class to which the torus belongs. The genus $g>1$ black hole has no other free parameters apart from the mass and the charge. All such black holes exhibits a natural temperature which is identified as the period of the Euclidean continuation and there is a mass formula connecting the mass with the surface gravity and the horizon area of the black hole. The Euclidean action and entropy are computed and used to argue that the mass spectrum of states is positive definite.Comment: 14 pages, standard latex, enlarged version, major conceptual changes, more detailed calculations, new references adde

The heat-kernel expansion and ζ-regularization techniques for quantum field theory and extended objects on curved space-times are reviewed. In particular, ultrastatic space-times with spatial section consisting in manifold with constant curvature are discussed in detail. Several mathematical results, relevant to physical applications are presented, including exact solutions of the heat-kernel equation, a simple exposition of hyperbolic geometry and an elementary derivation of the Selberg trace formula. With regards to the physical applications, the vacuum energy for scalar fields, the one-loop renormalization of a self-interacting scalar field theory on a hyperbolic space-time, with a discussion on the topological symmetry breaking, the finite temperature effects and the Bose-Einstein condensation, are considered. Some attempts to generalize the results to extended objects are also presented, including some remarks on path integral quantization, asymptotic properties of extended objects and a novel representation for the one-loop (super)string free energy.

The aim of this work is to review the tunnelling method as an alternative description of the quantum radiation from black holes and cosmological horizons. The method is first formulated and discussed for the case of stationary black holes, then a foundation is provided in terms of analytic continuation throughout complex space-time. The two principal implementations of the tunnelling approach, which are the null geodesic method and the Hamilton-Jacobi method, are shown to be equivalent in the stationary case. The Hamilton-Jacobi method is then extended to cover spherically symmetric dynamical black holes, cosmological horizons and naked singularities. Prospects and achievements are discussed in the conclusions. *

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A local Hawking temperature is derived for any future outer trapping horizon in spherical symmetry, using a Hamilton–Jacobi variant of the Parikh–Wilczek tunneling method. It is given by a dynamical surface gravity as defined geometrically. The operational meaning of the temperature is that Kodama observers just outside the horizon measure an invariantly redshifted temperature, diverging at the horizon itself. In static, asymptotically flat cases, the Hawking temperature as usually defined by the Killing vector agrees in standard cases, but generally differs by a relative redshift factor between the horizon and infinity, this being the temperature measured by static observers at infinity. Likewise, the geometrical surface gravity reduces to the Newtonian surface gravity in the Newtonian limit, while the Killing definition instead reflects measurements at infinity. This may resolve a long-standing puzzle concerning the Hawking temperature for the extremal limit of the charged stringy black hole, namely that it is the local temperature which vanishes. In general, this confirms the quasi-stationary picture of black-hole evaporation in early stages. However, the geometrical surface gravity is generally not the surface gravity of a static black hole with the same parameters.

A class of metrics solving Einstein's equations with negative cosmological constant and representing rotating, topological black holes is presented. All such solutions are in the Petrov type-D class, and can be obtained from the most general metric known in this class by acting with suitably chosen discrete groups of isometries. First, by analytical continuation of the Kerrde Sitter metric, a solution describing uncharged, rotating black holes whose event horizon is a Riemann surface of arbitrary genus g > 1, is obtained. Then a solution representing a rotating, uncharged toroidal black hole is also presented. The higher genus black holes appear to be quite exotic objects, they lack global axial symmetry and have an intricate causal structure. The toroidal black holes appear to be simpler, they have rotational symmetry and *

Previous work on dynamical black hole instability is further elucidated within the Hamilton–Jacobi method for horizon tunneling and the reconstruction of the classical action by means of the null expansion method. Everything is based on two natural requirements, namely that the tunneling rate is an observable and therefore it must be based on invariantly defined quantities, and that coordinate systems which do not cover the horizon should not be admitted. These simple observations can help to clarify some ambiguities, like the doubling of the temperature occurring in the static case when using singular coordinates and the role, if any, of the temporal contribution of the action to the emission rate. The formalism is also applied to FRW cosmological models, where it is observed that it predicts the positivity of the temperature naturally, without further assumptions on the sign of energy.