A lower bound on the Bekenstein-Hawking temperature of black holes

We present evidence for the existence of a quantum lower bound on the Bekenstein-Hawking temperature of black holes. The suggested bound is supported by a gedanken experiment in which a charged particle is dropped into a Kerr black hole. It is proved that the temperature of the final Kerr-Newman black-hole configuration is bounded from below by the relation T-BH x r(H) >((h) over bar /r(H))(2), where r(H) is the horizon radius of the black hole. (C) 2016 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP(3).