Black hole evaporation and compact extra dimensions

Abstract

We study the evaporation of black holes in space-times with extra dimensions of size L by employing the microcanonical picture of Hawking's radiation. We show that the luminosity is greatly damped when the horizon becomes smaller than L and black holes born with an initial size smaller than L are almost stable. This effect is due to the strong dependence of both the occupation number density of Hawking quanta and the greybody factor of a black hole on the dimensionality of space. Although the picture of what happens when the horizon shrinks to a size L is still incomplete, we argue that there might occur an outburst of energy which leaves a quasistable remnant.