Hawking radiation from stationary black holes using gravitational anomaly

Abstract

Among all the different techniques to derive the Hawking effect, the approach based on gravitational anomaly by Robinson and Wilczek provides a simple and satisfactory origin of the black hole radiation. In this picture, the effective near horizon physics becomes chiral and contains gravitational anomaly. Nevertheless, the underlying description must be generally covariant, and therefore we require a compensating energy-momentum flux whose divergence cancels the anomaly at the horizon. Remarkably, the energy flux associated with the Hawking emission from the horizon exactly cancels the gravitational anomaly and restores the general covariance at the quantum level. In this work, we present a generalization of the original derivation for a stationary axisymmetric black hole solution of any gravity theory which differs perturbatively from general relativity. The crucial input of the calculation is a remarkable simplification of the near horizon geometry and the validity of the zeroth law of black hole mechanics.