The issues of scaling symmetry and critical point behavior are studied for fluctuations about extremal charged black holes. We consider the scattering and capture of the spherically symmetric mode of a charged, massive test field on the background spacetime of a black hole with charge Q and mass M. The spacetime geometry near the horizon of a ‖Q‖=M black hole has a scaling symmetry, which is absent if ‖Q‖<M, a scale being introduced by the surface gravity. We show that this symmetry leads to the existence of a self-similar solution for the charged field near the horizon, and further, that there is a one parameter family of discretely self-similar solutions. The scaling symmetry, or lack thereof, also shows up in correlation length scales, defined in terms of the rate at which the influence of an external source coupled to the field dies off. It is shown by constructing the Green’s functions that an external source has a long range influence on the extremal background, compared to a correlation length scale which falls off exponentially fast in the ‖Q‖<M case. Finally it is shown that, in the limit of Δ==(1-${\mathit{Q}}^2$/${\mathit{M}}^2$${)}^{1/2}$→0 in the background spacetime, infinitesimal changes in the black hole area vary like ${\mathrm{\Delta }}^{1/2}$.

• Received 21 March 1994

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.50.7144