SOURCE VACUUM FLUCTUATIONS OF BLACK-HOLE RADIANCE

The emergence of Hawking radiation from vacuum fluctuations is analysed in conventional field theories and their energy content is defined through the Aharonov weak value concept. These fluctuations emerge from the asymptotically flat region at past light-like infinity and carry energies which are large compared to the Planck scale, sharply localized on distances small compared to the Planck size. We argue that these features cannot accommodate gravitational non-linearities. We suggest that the very emission of Hawking photons from tamed vacuum fluctuations may require a large and possibly infinite set of highly degenerate massive states. These considerations corroborate some conjectures of Susskind and may prove relevant for the back-reaction problem and for the unitarity issue.