Motivated by the recent argument that in the TeV-scale gravity trans-Planckian domains of spacetime as effective naked singularities would be generated by high-energy particle (and black hole) collisions, we investigate the quantum particle creation by naked-singularity formations in general dimensions. Background spacetime is simply modeled by the self-similar Vaidya solution, describing the spherical collapse of a null dust fluid. In a generic case, the emission power is found to be proportional to the quadratic inverse of the remaining time to a Cauchy horizon, as known in four dimensions. On the other hand, the power is proportional to the quartic inverse for a critical case in which the Cauchy horizon is “degenerate.” According to these results, we argue that the backreaction of the particle creation to gravity will be important in particle collisions, in contrast to the gravitational collapse of massive stellar objects, since the bulk of energy is carried away by the quantum radiation even if a quantum gravitational effect cutoff the radiation just before the appearance of a naked singularity.

• Received 4 August 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.84.064045