Yang-Mills instantons as the end point of black hole evaporation

Non-perturbative contributions of the Euclidean path integral are important to understand the information loss paradox. In this paper, we revisit the Yang-Mills instantons in the Einstein-Yang-Mills theory. There exists a globally regular solution that is known as the Bartnik-McKinnon solution and a black hole solution. The regular and the black hole solutions are smoothly connected in the small horizon limit. Their Euclidean action is solely characterized by the ADM mass, and the transition probability follows the usual Bekenstein-Hawking entropy formula. Therefore, the Yang-Mills instantons provide a non-perturbative channel to the black hole evaporation, which competes effectively with perturbative processes, and becomes dominant toward the end of evaporation. We show that these instantons provide a smooth transition mechanism from a black hole to regular spacetime.