Simple models for unitary black hole evolution are given in an effective Hilbert-space description, parameterizing a possible minimal relaxation of locality, with respect to semiclassical black hole geometry.
Inspired by a recent model of Osuga and Page, we propose an explicitly unitary fermionic toy model for transferring information from a black hole to the outgoing radiation. The model treats the unitary evolution as a composition of the Hawking pair creation outside the black hole and of pair annihilation inside the black hole.
This paper shows a way of how one may resolve the non-unitarity problem in black-hole physics without modifications of the basic principles of local quantum field theory.
We show within the usual two-dimensional approximation that unitarity and the restoration of Minkowski vacuum correlations at the end of black hole evaporation impose unexpected constraints on its mass loss rate: before disappearing the black hole emits one or more negative energy burst, leading to a temporary increase of its mass.
Hawking has proposed non-unitary rules for computing the probabilistic outcome of black hole formation. It is shown that the usual interpretation of these rules violates the superposition principle and energy conservation. Refinements of Hawking's rules are found which restore both the superposition principle and energy conservation, but leave completely unaltered Hawking's prediction of a thermal emission spectrum prior to the endpoint of black hole evaporation. These new rules violate clustering. They further imply the existence of superselection sectors, within each of which clustering is r…
In this paper, we try to construct black hole thermodynamics based on the fact that, the formation and evaporation of a black hole can be described by quantum unitary evolutions. First, we show that the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy $S_{BH}$ may not be a Boltzmann or thermal entropy. To confirm this statement, we show that the original black hole's "first law" may not simply be treated as the first law of thermodynamics formally, due to some missing metric perturbations caused by matter. Then, by including those (quantum) metric perturbations, we show that the black hole formation and evaporation…
In a recent paper Osuga and Page have presented an explicitly unitary toy qubit transport model for transferring information from a black hole to the outgoing radiation. Following their idea we propose a unitary toy model which involves (fermionic) Hawking states.
We study a manifestly unitary formulation of 2d dilaton quantum gravity based on the reduced phase space quantization. The spacetime metric can be expanded in a formal power series of the matter energy-momentum tensor operator. This expansion can be used for calculating the quantum corrections to the classical black hole metric by evaluating the expectation value of the metric operator in an appropriate class of the physical states. When the normal ordering in the metric operator is chosen to be with respect to Kruskal vacuum, the lowest order semiclassical metric is exactly the one-loop effec…
Black hole radiation from an infinitesimally thin massive collapsing shell, possessing a global monopole charge, which in turn leads to a Schwarzschild black hole with a global monopole charge has been shown to be processed by a unitary evolution. The exterior metric of the collapsing shell is described by the global monopole (GM) metric. The analysis is performed using the Wheeler-deWitt formalism which gave rise to a Schrödinger-like wave equation. Existence of unitarity is confirmed from two independent lines of approach. Firstly, by showing that the trace of the square of the density matri…
We give an explicit toy qubit transport model for transferring information from the gravitational field of a black hole to the Hawking radiation by a continuous unitary transformation of the outgoing radiation and the black hole gravitational field. The model has no firewalls or other drama at the event horizon, and it avoids a counterargument that has been raised for subsystem transfer models as resolutions of the firewall paradox. Furthermore, it fits the set of six physical constraints that Giddings has proposed for models of black hole evaporation. It does utilize nonlocal qubits for the g…
Using the AdS/CFT, we establish a correspondence between the intricate thermal phases of R-charged AdS_{5} blackholes and the R-charge sector of the N=4 gauge theory, in the large N limit. Integrating out all fields in the gauge theory except the thermal Polyakov line, leads to an effective unitary matrix model. In the canonical ensemble, a logarithmic term is generated in the non-zero charge sector of the matrix model. This term is important to discuss various supergravity properties like i) the non-existence of thermal AdS as a solution, ii) the existence of a point of cusp catastrophe in th…
We describe a model for unitary black hole evaporation with no information loss in terms of a quantum computation. We assume that there is a fine tuned interaction between the qubits of the black hole Bell states which is the inverse of premeasurement. Evaporation is unitary due to a projection on the black hole state at the end of each computation whereas information comes out of the black hole by teleportation. The model requires only four operations; the qubit interactions, the Hadamard and CNOT gates and the projection which is nonunitary. The model is a concrete quantum computation that r…
Reduced phase space formulation of CGHS model of 2d dilaton gravity is studied in en extrinsic time gauge. The corresponding Hamiltonian can be promoted into a Hermitian operator acting in the physical Hilbert space, implying a unitary evolution for the system. Consequences for the black hole physics are discussed. In particular, this manifestly unitary theory rules out the Hawking scenario for the endpoint of the black hole evaporation process.
We discuss stability issues of Schwarzschild black hole in non-local gravity. It is shown that the stability analysis of black hole for the unitary and renormalizable non-local gravity with $γ_2=-2γ_0$ cannot be performed in the Lichnerowicz operator approach. On the other hand, for the unitary and non-renormalizable case with $γ_2=0$, the black hole is stable against the metric perturbations. For non-unitary and renormalizable local gravity with $γ_2=-2γ_0={\rm const}$ (fourth-order gravity), the small black holes are unstable against the metric perturbations. This implies that what makes the…
A new simple qubit model of black hole evaporation is proposed. The model operates on four qubits and is defined in terms of quantum gates and a quantum circuit. The chief features of the model include explicit unitarity and (most notably) causality which is understood as the impossibility of the transfer of information from the interior of the black hole through its horizon. The corresponding von Neumann entanglement entropy yields a crude (four-qubit) approximation of the Page curve.
We assume that a quantum gravity theory exists where evolutions are unitary, no information is lost, singularities are resolved, and horizons form. Thus a massive star will collapse to a black hole having a horizon and an interior singularity--resolved region. Based on unitarity and on a postulated relation, we obtain an evolution equation for the size of this region. As the black hole evolves by evaporation and accretions, this region grows, meets the horizon, and becomes accessible to an outside observer. The required time is typically of the order of black hole evaporation time. If the boun…
We examine the basic assumptions in the original setup of the firewall paradox. The main claim is that a single mode of the lathe radiation is maximally entangled with the mode inside the horizon and simultaneously with the modes of early Hawking radiation. We argue that this situation never happens during the evolution of a black hole. Quantum mechanics tells us that while the black hole exists, unitary evolution maximally entangles a late mode located just outside the horizon with a combination of early radiation and black hole states, instead of either of them separately. One of the reasons…
Based on the discretized horizon picture, we introduce a macroscopic effective model of the horizon area quanta that encapsulates the features necessary for black holes to evaporate consistently. The price to pay is the introduction of a "hidden sector" that represents our lack of knowledge about the final destination of the black hole entropy. We focus on the peculiar form of the interaction between this hidden sector and the black hole enforced by the self-consistency. Despite the expressive power of the model, we arrive at several qualitative statements. Furthermore, we identify these state…
We discuss massive scalar perturbations of a two-dimensional dilaton black hole. We employ a Pauli-Villars reqularization scheme to calculate the effect of the scalar perturbation on the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. By concentrating on the dynamics of the scalar field near the horizon, we argue that quantum effects alter the effective potential. We calculate the two-point function explicitly and show that it exhibits Poincare recurrences.
The effect of a black hole state evolution on the Hawking radiation is studied using the final state boundary condition. It is found that theormodynamic or statistical mechanical properties of a black hole depend strongly on the unitary evolution operator $S$ which determines the black hole state evolution. When the operator $S~$ is random unitary or psudeo random unitary, a black hole emits thermal radiation as predicted by Hawking three decades ago. On the other hand, it is found that the emission of Hawking radiation could be suppressed when the evolution of a black hole state is given by t…
Previous results on trans-Planckian collisions in superstring theory are rewritten in terms of an explicitly unitary S-matrix whose range of validity covers a large region of the energy/impact-parameter plane. Amusingly, as part of this region's border is approached, properties of the final state start resembling those expected from the evaporation of a black-hole even well below its production threshold. More specifically, we conjecture that, in an energy window extending up such a threshold, inclusive cross sections satisfy a peculiar "anti-scaling" behaviour seemingly preparing for a smooth…
A quantum system with a black hole accommodates two widely different, though physically equivalent, descriptions. In one description, based on global spacetime of general relativity, the existence of the interior region is manifest, while understanding unitarity requires nonperturbative quantum gravity effects such as replica wormholes. The other description adopts a manifestly unitary, or holographic, description, in which the interior emerges effectively as a collective phenomenon of fundamental degrees of freedom. In this paper we study the latter approach, which we refer to as the unitary …
We study the black hole information paradox in the context of a two-dimensional toy model given by dilaton gravity coupled to $N$ massless scalar fields. After making the model well-defined by imposing reflecting boundary conditions at a critical value of the dilaton field, we quantize the theory and derive the quantum quantum $S$-matrix for the case that $N$=$24$. This $S$-matrix is unitary by construction, and we further argue that in the semiclassical regime it describes the formation and subsequent Hawking evaporation of two-dimensional black holes. Finally, we note an interesting correspo…
The unitary crisis for black holes indicates an apparent need to modify local quantum field theory. This paper explores the idea that quantum mechanics and in particular unitarity are fundamental principles, but at the price of familiar locality. Thus, one should seek to parameterize unitary evolution, extending the field theory description of black holes, such that their quantum information is transferred to the external state. This discussion is set in a broader framework of unitary evolution acting on Hilbert spaces comprising subsystems. Here, various constraints can be placed on the dynam…
The quantum properties of charged black holes (BHs) in 2D dilaton-Maxwell gravity (spontaneously compactified from heterotic string) with $N$ dilaton coupled scalars are studied. We first investigate 2D BHs found by McGuigan, Nappi and Yost. Kaluza-Klein reduction of 3D gravity with minimal scalars leads also to 2D dilaton-Maxwell gravity with dilaton coupled scalars and the rotating BH solution found by Bañados, Teitelboim and Zanelli (BTZ) which can be also described by 2D charged dilatonic BH. Evaluating the one-loop effective action for dilaton coupled scalars in large $N$ (and s-wave appr…
Final state of a black hole is studied by taking into account a general unitary evolution of a black hole matter state. It is found that the mixedness decreases under general unitary transformation when the initial matter state was in mixed state and the mean fidelity at the evaporation is smaller than the fidelity of the quantum teleportation by the factor of inverse square of the number of states of a black hole. The change of entanglement Alice-Bob pair at evaporation is also studied by calculating the entanglement fidelity and eigenvalues of the partial transposed block density matrix. We …
The formation and evaporation of small AdS black holes in a theory with a holographic dual is governed by the usual rules of quantum mechanics. The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis explains the validity of semiclassical gravity for local bulk observables and can be used to quantify the magnitude of quantum corrections to the semiclassical approximation. The holographic dual produces a basis of black hole states with finite energy width, and observables that are smooth functions on the classical phase space will self-average over a large number of energy eigenstates, exponential in the Beke…
We propose a CFT unitary description of the gravitational collapse. The starting point is the model of a black hole in AdS proposed by Maldacena in arXiv: 0106112 [hep-th]. We show that by proposing a two-copies version of the AdS/CFT conjecture, the process of formation of black holes so as other spacetimes with horizons may be described as an unitary process in the dual field theory. In doing this, we construct a well defined framework to describe general spacetimes as entangled states, in terms of the spectrum of states on the exact Anti-de-Sitter background. As application, we show how the…
We find a family of exact solutions to the semi-classical equations (including back-reaction) of two-dimensional dilaton gravity, describing infalling null matter that becomes outgoing and returns to infinity without forming a black hole. When a black hole almost forms, the radiation reaching infinity in advance of the original outgoing null matter has the properties of Hawking radiation. The radiation reaching infinity after the null matter consists of a brief burst of negative energy that preserves unitarity and transfers information faster than the theoretical bound for positive energy.
This article is devoted to static spherically symmetric black hole solutions of dRGT (de Rham-Gabadadze-Tolley) massive gravity in the presence of cosmological constant. The unitary and non-unitary gauges are used to find the solutions in three, four and five dimensions. We show that there are two general classes of solutions. In one of them, the effect of massive potential is appeared as the effective cosmological constant. By investigating these solutions in different dimensions, we find an expression for effective cosmological constant in arbitrary dimensions.
A unitary effective field model of the black hole evaporation is proposed to satisfy almost the four postulates of the black hole complementarity (BHC). In this model, we enlarge a black hole-scalar field system by adding an extra radiation detector that couples with the scalar field. After performing a partial trace over the scalar field space, we obtain an effective entanglement between the black hole and the detector (or radiation in it). As the whole system evolves, the S-matrix formula can be constructed formally step by step. Without local quantum measurements, the paradoxes of the infor…
Considering the role of black hole singularity in quantum evolution, a resolution to the firewall paradox is presented. It is emphasized that if an observer has the singularity as a part of his spacetime, then the semi-classical evolution would be non-unitary as viewed by him. Specifically, a free-falling observer inside the black hole would have a Hilbert space with non-unitary evolution; a quantum jump for particles encountering the singularity to outside of the horizon as late Hawking radiations. The non-unitariness in the jump resembles the one in collapse of wave function, but preserves e…
We consider unitary and weakly coupled theories of gravity that extend Einstein gravity and reduce to it asymptotically at large distances. Our discussion is restricted to such theories that, similarly to Einstein gravity, contain black holes as semiclassical states in a range of scales. We show that, at a given scale, the entropy of these black holes has to be larger than the number of elementary light species in the theory. Our bound follows from the observation that the black hole entropy has to be larger than the product of its mass and horizon radius (in units of Planck's constant divided…
In the work [P. Kraus and F. Wilczek, \textit{Self-interaction correction to black hole radiation, Nucl. Phys.} B433 (1995) 403], it has been pointed out that the self-gravitation interaction would modify the black hole radiation so that it is no longer thermal, where it is, however, corrected in an approximate way and therefore is not established its relationship with the underlying unitary theory in quantum theory. In this paper, we revisit the self-gravitation interaction to Hawking radiation of the general spherically symmetric black hole, and find that the precisely derived spectrum is no…
The basic features of a quantum field theory which is Poincaré invariant, gauge invariant, finite and unitary to all orders of perturbation theory are reviewed. Quantum gravity is finite and unitary to all orders of perturbation theory. The Bekenstein-Hawking entropy formula for a black hole is investigated in a conical Rindler space approximation to a black hole event horizon. A renormalization of the gravitational coupling constant is performed leading to a finite Bekenstein-Hawking entropy at the horizon.
We review the current status of the construction of unitary representations of U-duality groups of supergravity theories in five, four and three dimensions. We focus mainly on the maximal supergravity theories and on the N=2 Maxwell-Einstein supergravity (MESGT) theories defined by Jordan algebras of degree three in five dimensions and their descendants in four and three dimensions. Entropies of the extremal black hole solutions of these theories in five and four dimensions are given by certain invariants of their U-duality groups. The five dimensional U-duality groups admit extensions to spec…
In this paper, we critically revisit the Horowitz-Maldacena proposal and its generalization by Lloyd. In the original proposal, as well as in Lloyd's generalization, Hawking radiation involves a pair of maximally entangled quantum states in which the ingoing partner state and the collapsed matter form either a maximally entangled pair or a Schmidt decomposed random state near the singularity. We point out that the unitary matrix introduced in Lloyd's fidelity calculation depends on initial matter states; hence, his result on the high average fidelity may not represent an almost unitary evoluti…
Recently, several simple quantum mechanical toy models of black hole evaporation have appeared in the literature attempting to illuminate the black hole information paradox. We present a general class of models that is large enough to describe both unitary and nonunitary evaporation, and study a few specific examples to clarify some potential confusions regarding recent results. We also generalize Mathur's bound on small corrections to black hole dynamics. Conclusions are then drawn about the requirements for unitary evaporation of black holes in this class of models. We present a one-paramete…
The dynamics of a thin spherically symmetric shell of zero-rest-mass matter in its own gravitational field is studied. A form of action principle is used that enables the reformulation of the dynamics as motion on a fixed background manifold. A self-adjoint extension of the Hamiltonian is obtained via the group quantization method. Operators of position and of direction of motion are constructed. The shell is shown to avoid the singularity, to bounce and to re-expand to that asymptotic region from which it contracted; the dynamics is, therefore, truly unitary. If a wave packet is sufficiently …
It has been recently proposed that the naive semiclassical prediction of non-unitary black hole evaporation can be understood in the fundamental description of the black hole as a consequence of ignorance of high-complexity information. Validity of this conjecture implies that any algorithm which is polynomially bounded in computational complexity cannot accurately reconstruct the black hole dynamics. In this work, we prove that such bounded quantum algorithms cannot accurately predict (pseudo)random unitary dynamics, even if they are given access to an arbitrary set of polynomially complex ob…
We study the wave equation for a massive scalar in three-dimensional AdS-black hole spacetimes to understand the unitarity issues in a semiclassical way. Here we introduce four interesting spacetimes: the non-rotating BTZ black hole (NBTZ), pure AdS spacetime (PADS), massless BTZ black hole (MBTZ), and extremal BTZ black hole (EBTZ). Our method is based on the potential analysis and solving the wave equation to find the condition for the frequency $ω$ exactly. In the NBTZ case, one finds the quasinormal (complex and discrete) modes which signals for a non-unitary evolution. Real and discrete m…
We develop a Hamiltonian formalism which can be used to discuss the physics of a massless scalar field in a gravitational background of a Schwarzschild black hole. Using this formalism we show that the time evolution of the system is unitary and yet all known results such as the existence of Hawking radiation can be readily understood. We then point out that the Hamiltonian formalism leads to interesting observations about black hole entropy and the information paradox.
We introduce a general class of toy models to study the quantum information-theoretic properties of black hole radiation. The models are governed by a set of isometries that specify how microstates of the black hole at a given energy evolve to entangled states of a tensor product black-hole/radiation Hilbert space. The final state of the black hole radiation is conveniently summarized by a tensor network built from these isometries. We introduce a set of quantities generalizing the Renyi entropies that provide a complete set of bipartite/multipartite entanglement measures, and give a general f…
We reconsider $D\geq4$ dimensional asymptotically flat eternal Schwarzschild black hole, and focus on the situation where the inner boundary of the radiation region is chosen to be near the horizon (i.e. $β\ll1$). The tension between the near-horizon condition and the short-distance approximation emerges in large dimensions in $[JHEP 06 (2020) 085]$. We remove this tension by introducing a more proper near horizon condition, thus the resulting island solution is well-behaved in any $D\geq4$ dimensional spacetime. Interestingly, a novel constraint is obtained in this situation as required by th…
Constructing an exact correspondence between a black hole model, formed from the most simple solution of Einstein's equations, and a particular moving mirror trajectory, we investigate a new model that preserves unitarity. The Bogoliubov coefficients in 1+1 dimensions are computed analytically. The key modification limits the origin of coordinates (moving mirror) to sub-light asymptotic speed. Effective continuity across the metric ensures that there is no information loss. The black hole emits thermal radiation and the total evaporation energy emitted is finite without backreaction, consisten…
Parikh-Wilczek tunnelling framework is investigated again. We argue that Parikh-Wilczek's treatment, which satisfies the first law of black hole thermodynamics and consists with an underlying unitary theory, is only suitable for a reversible process. Because of the negative heat capacity, an evaporating black hole is a highly unstable system. That is, the factual emission process is irreversible, the unitary theory will not be satisfied and the information loss is possible.
We review recent progress in our understanding of the physics of black holes. In particular, we discuss the ideas from string theory that explain the entropy of black holes from a counting of microstates of the hole, and the related derivation of unitary Hawking radiation from such holes.
A six-dimensional black string is considered and its Bekenstein-Hawking entropy computed. It is shown that to leading order above extremality, this entropy precisely counts the number of string states with the given energy and charges. This identification implies that Hawking decay of the near-extremal black string can be analyzed in string perturbation theory and is perturbatively unitary.
In the framework of finite-dimensional Fock space models, for a predefined fixed mean number of particles $\bar{n}_{k}$, it is shown that there is a ``large'' multi-dimensional subspace $s_{\bar{n}_{k}}$ of initial pure states, in the space $S$ of all pure states, unitarily evolving to a subspace $S_{\bar{n}_{k}}$ of final pure states which yield $\bar{n}_{k}$. As an example, in particular it follows that the blackbody form of the mean number of particles $\bar{n}_{k}$ does not by itself contradict unitarity of black hole evaporation.
We provide a fuzzball picture for Schwarzshild black holes, in which matters and energy consisting the hole are not positioned on the central point exclusively but oscillate around there in a serial of eigen-modes, each of which features a special level of binding degrees and are quantum mechanically possible to be measured outside the horizon. By listing these modes explicitly for holes as large as $6M_\mathrm{pl}$, we find that their number increases exponentially with the area. Basing on this picture, we present a simple but explicitly unitary derivation of hawking radiations.
We found that the Wigner rotation of a particle with spin 1/2, which is unitary in Minkowski spacetime, becomes non-unitary as the particle is falling onto the black hole. This implies that, from the quantum information processing point of view, any quantum information encoded in spins will be dissipated near the black hole. The gravitational field around the black hole thus acts like a dissipative quantum channel, especially the bit flip channel.
General features of information transfer between quantum subsystems, via unitary evolution, are investigated, with applications to the problem of information transfer from a black hole to its surroundings. A particularly direct form of quantum information transfer is "subspace transfer," which can be characterized by saturation of a subadditivity inequality. We also describe more general unitary quantum information transfer, and categorize different models for black hole evolution. Evolution that only creates paired excitations inside/outside the black hole is shown not to extract information,…
It is shown that the internal stationary state of the Schwarzschild black hole can be represented by a maximally entangled two-mode squeezed state of collapsing matter and infalling Hawking radiation. The final boundary condition at the singularity is then described by the random unitary transformation acting on the collapsing matter field. The outgoing Hawking radiation is obtained by the final state projection on the total wave function, which looks like a quantum teleportation process without the classical information transmitted. The black hole evaporation process as seen by the observer o…