Abstract:
Hawking radiation originates from a “quantum atmosphere” around black holes, not necessarily from the
vicinity of the horizon. We examine and discuss the properties of quantum atmospheres of asymptotically flat
Reissner-Nordström black holes, which extends further and further away from the black hole as extremality is
approached, though arguably it becomes indistinguishable from normal vacuum fluctuation at spatial infinity. In
addition, following our previous findings on rewriting the Hawking temperature of a Kerr black hole in terms
of a “spring constant,” we generalize the same notion to the Reissner-Nordström case, which allows us to put a
minimum size on the location where Hawking particles can be emitted near a black hole, which agrees with the
stretched horizon.