Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.
DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.
In theoretical physics, an extremal black hole is a black hole with the minimum possible mass that is compatible with its charge and angular momentum. The concept of an extremal black hole is theoretical and none have thusfar been observed in nature. However, many theories are based on their existence. In supersymmetric theories, extremal black holes are often supersymmetric: they are invariant under several supercharges. This is a consequence of the BPS bound. Such black holes are stable and emit no Hawking radiation. Their black hole entropy can be calculated in string theory. It has been suggested by Sean Carroll that the entropy of an extremal black hole is equal to zero. Carroll explains the lack of entropy by creating a separate dimension for the black hole to exist within. The Hawking radiation of extremal black holes are considered non-thermal (non-Planck distributed), with no associated temperature. The hypothetical black hole electron is super-extremal (having more charge and angular momentum than a black hole of its mass "should").