Circular geodesic radiation in Schwarzschild spacetime: A semiclassical approach

Abstract

Extreme curvature settings and nontrivial causal structure of curved spacetimes may have interesting theoretical and practical implications for quantum field theories. Radiation emission in black hole spacetimes is one such scenario in which the semiclassical approach, i.e. quantum fields propagating in a nondynamical background spacetime, adds a very simple conceptual point of view and allows us to compute the emitted power in a straightforward way. Within this context, we reexamine sources in circular orbit around a Schwarzschild black hole, investigating the emission of scalar, electromagnetic and gravitational radiations. The analysis of the differences and similarities between these cases provide an excellent overview of the powerful conceptual and computational tool that is quantum field theory in curved spacetime.