Skyrmion Black Hole Hair: Conservation of Baryon Number by Black Holes and Observable Manifestations

Understand

We show that the existence of black holes with classical skyrmion hair invalidates standard proofs that global charges, such as the baryon number, cannot be conserved by a black hole.

• By carefully analyzing the standard arguments based on a Gedankenexperiment in which a black hole is seemingly-unable to return the baryon number that it swallowed, we identify inconsistencies in this reasoning, which does not take into the account neither the existence of skyrmion black holes nor the baryon/skyrmion correspondence.
• We then perform a refined Gedankenexperiment by incorporating the new knowledge and show that no contradiction with conservation of baryon number takes place at any stage of black hole evolution.
• Our analysis also indicates no conflict between semi-classical black holes and the existence of baryonic gauge interaction arbitrarily-weaker than gravity.