We investigate possible signatures of black hole events at the LHC in the hypothesis that such objects will not evaporate completely, but leave a stable remnant. For the purpose of defining a reference scenario, we have employed the publicly availabl
e Monte Carlo generator CHARYBDIS2, in which the remnants behavior is mostly determined by kinematic constraints and conservation of some quantum numbers, such as the baryon charge. Our findings show that electrically neutral remnants are highly favored and a significantly larger amount of missing transverse momentum is to be expected with respect to the case of complete decay.
The microcanonical ensemble is the proper ensemble to describe black holes which are not in thermodynamic equilibrium, such as radiating black holes. This choice of ensemble eliminates the problems, e.g. negative specific heat and loss of unitarity,
encountered when the canonical ensemble is used. In this review we present an overview of the weaknesses of the standard thermodynamic description of black holes and show how the microcanonical approach can provide a consistent description of black holes and their Hawking radiation at all energy scales. Our approach is based on viewing the horizon area as yielding the ensemble density at fixed system energy. We then compare the decay rates of black holes in the two different pictures. Our description is particularly relevant for the analysis of micro-black holes whose existence is predicted in models with extra- spatial dimensions.
