The extremal Reissner-Nordstr\"om throat from non extremal near horizon expansions

Abstract

The near horizon region of a non extremal black hole has a universal Rindler form, but the strict horizon limit is not an ordinary Lorentzian geometry. In the String Carroll expansion of this non extremal near horizon metric,the transverse angular directions form a base and the time-radial Rindler directions appear as a distinguished two-dimensional longitudinal sector fibered over this base. We study how this String Carroll expansion behaves for the Reissner-Nordstr\"om (RN) black hole as the extremal limit is approached, where the expected near horizon geometry is the Lorentzian $AdS_2 \times S^2$ throat. We show that while for the four-dimensional non extremal RN geometry, the String Carroll expansion correctly captures the near horizon Rindler region, it is not sufficient to recover the extremal $AdS_2 \times S^2$ throat. The reason is that the higher order terms, which are suppressed in the String Carroll expansion, become essential in the extremal limit. We show that in Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates, the required contribution appears at second order and restores the radial dependence needed for the $AdS_2$ geometry. The extremal $AdS_2 \times S^2$ throat is then obtained as the zero-temperature limit of the scaled throat geometry. In static coordinates, the temporal sector of the extremal throat geometry can be obtained from a second order near horizon expansion, but the radial sector cannot be obtained from any finite order truncation and requires contributions from all orders in the near horizon expansion.