Will we observe black holes at LHC?

Marco Cavaglia, Saurya Das, Roy Maartens

Published 2003-05-20, updated 2003-06-27Version 2

The generalized uncertainty principle, motivated by string theory and non-commutative quantum mechanics, suggests significant modifications to the Hawking temperature and evaporation process of black holes. For extra-dimensional gravity with Planck scale O(TeV), this leads to important changes in the formation and detection of black holes at the the Large Hadron Collider. The number of particles produced in Hawking evaporation decreases substantially. The evaporation ends when the black hole mass is Planck scale, leaving a remnant and a consequent missing energy of order TeV. Furthermore, the minimum energy for black hole formation in collisions is increased, and could even be increased to such an extent that no black holes are formed at LHC energies.