Nonsingular black holes in quadratic Palatini gravity

We find that if general relativity is modified at the Planck scale by a Ricci-squared term, electrically charged black holes may be nonsingular. These objects concentrate their mass in a microscopic sphere of radius r(core) approximate to N(q)(1/2)l(P)/3, where l(P) is the Planck length and N-q is the number of electric charges. The singularity is avoided if the mass of the object satisfies the condition M-0(2) approximate to m(P)(2)alpha N-3/2(em)q(3)/2, where m(P) is the Planck mass and alpha(em) is the fine-structure constant. For astrophysical black holes this amount of charge is so small that their external horizon almost coincides with their Schwarzschild radius. We work within a first-order (Palatini) approach.