Universal quantum Hawking evaporation of integrable two-dimensional solitons

In a work published in 1976, Abdus Salam and his student John Strathdee proposed a connection between two different fields, namely general relativity and the theory of nonlinear evolution equations. Their conjecture was simple: a black hole is nothing else than a soliton. We show that any soliton of an arbitrary two-dimensional integrable equation has the potential to evaporate and emit the analogue of Hawking radiation from black holes. From the AKNS matrix formulation of integrability, we show that it is possible to associate a real spacetime metric tensor which defines a curved surface, perceived by the classical and quantum fluctuations propagating on the soliton. By defining proper scalar invariants of the associated Riemannian geometry, and introducing the conformal anomaly, we are able to determine the Hawking temperatures and entropies of the fundamental solitons of the nonlinear Schrödinger, KdV and the sine-Gordon equations. The mechanism advanced here is simple, completely universal and can be applied to all integrable equations in two dimensions, and is easily applicable to a large class of black holes of any dimensionality, opening up totally new windows on the quantum mechanics of solitons and their deep connections with black hole physics.