(Anti-)evaporation of Schwarzschild-de Sitter black holes revisited

Abstract: It is widely believed that in the presence of a positive cosmological constant, heavy black holes can exhibit non-standard behaviour, namely there is a possibility that such objects would grow instead of evaporating. We point out that all those results (obtained in different frameworks) rely heavily upon the identification of the Nariai spacetime with the Schwarzschild--de Sitter (Kottler) black hole. In this note we argue that it is an incorrect assumption. As a result, previous treatments need revisiting. In particular, we show that within effective action approach, there is no solution corresponding to the Schwarzschild--de Sitter black hole.