The Schwarzschild singularity: a semiclassical bounce?

Abstract: We discuss the opportunity that the singularity inside a Schwarzschild black hole could be replaced by a regular bounce, described as a regular minimum of the spherical radius (instead of zero) and a regular maximum of the longitudinal scale (instead of infinity) in the corresponding Kantowski-Sachs metric. Such a metric in a vicinity of the bounce is shown to be a solution to the Einstein equations with the stress-energy tensor representing vacuum polarization of quantum matter fields, described by a combination of curvature-quadratic terms in the effective action. The indefinite parameters of the model can be chosen in such a way that it remains a few orders of magnitude apart from the Planck scale (say, on the GUT scale), that is, in a semiclassical regime.