The Hawking evaporation process of rapidly-rotating black holes: an almost continuous cascade of gravitons

It is shown that rapidly-rotating Kerr black holes are characterized by the dimensionless ratio tau(gap)/tau(emission) = O(1), where tau(gap) is the average time gap between the emissions of successive Hawking quanta and tau(emission) is the characteristic timescale required for an individual Hawking quantum to be emitted from the black hole. This relation implies that the Hawking cascade from rapidly-rotating black holes has an almost continuous character. Our results correct some inaccurate claims that recently appeared in the literature regarding the nature of the Hawking black-hole evaporation process.