Black hole decay and quantum instantons - art. no. 047504

We study the analytic structure of the S matrix which is obtained from the reduced Wheeler-DeWitt wave function describing spherically symmetric gravi tational collapse of massless scalar fields. The complex simple poles in th e S matrix lead to the wave functions that satisfy the same boundary condit ion as quasinormal modes of a black hole, and correspond to the bounded sta tes of the Euclidean Wheeler-DeWitt equation. These wave function are inter preted as quantum instantons.