The effect of brick walls on the black hole radiation

Abstract

In order to understand the physical effect of the brick-wall boundary condition, we compute the distribution of the zero-point energy of the massless scalar fields minimally coupled to the Schwarzschild and Reissner-Nordström black-hole backgrounds. We find that the black-hole radiation spectrum depends on the positions of the brick wall and the observer and that it reveals an interference effect due to the field reflected by the brick wall.