Bulk emission by higher-dimensional black holes: almost perfect blackbody radiation

Abstract: We study the Hawking radiation emitted into the bulk by $(D+1)$-dimensional Schwarzschild black holes. It is well-known that the black-hole spectrum departs from exact blackbody form due to the frequency dependence of the `greybody' factors. For intermediate values of $D$ ($3\leq D\lesssim10$), these frequency-dependent factors may significantly modify the spectrum of the emitted radiation. However, we point out that for $D\gg1$, the typical wavelengths in the black-hole spectrum are much {\it shorter} than the size of the black hole. In this regime, the greybody factors are well described by the geometric-optics approximation according to which they are almost frequency-independent. Following this observation, we argue that for higher-dimensional black holes with $D\gg1$, the total power emitted into the bulk should be well approximated by the analytical formula for perfect blackbody radiation. We test the validity of this analytical prediction with numerical computations.