📝 SummarXiv

Abstract

We present a novel mechanism for the formation of Planck-scale black hole remnants, or Planck relics, arising from third-order effective field theory corrections to general relativity. We derive the corresponding modifications to the Schwarzschild metric and the Hawking temperature and use them to obtain a modified evaporation law that departs significantly from Hawking's classical prediction at small masses. At a critical mass, $M_{crit}^{\pm}$, the rate of mass loss vanishes, while either the Hawking temperature remains finite as the horizon area shrinks to zero ($c_6>0$) or the horizon area remains finite as the Hawking temperature vanishes ($c_6<0$). In both cases the evaporation process freezes out, producing stable black hole remnants. Our results demonstrate that higher-order curvature corrections within effective field theory can provide a natural mechanism for remnant formation.