General relativity contains solutions in which two distant black holes are connected through the interior via a wormhole, or Einstein-Rosen bridge. These solutions can be interpreted as maximally entangled states of two black holes that form a complex EPR pair. We suggest that similar bridges might be present for more general entangled states.
In the case of entangled black holes one can formulate versions of the AMPS(S) paradoxes and resolve them. This suggests possible resolutions of the firewall paradoxes for more general situations.
Motivated by the black hole firewall problem, we find highly entangled pairs of spatially localized modes in quantum field theory. We demonstrate that appropriately chosen wavepackets localized outside the horizon are nearly purified by 'mirror' modes behind the horizon. In addition, we calculate the entanglement entropy of a single localized wavepacket in the Minkowski vacuum. In all cases we study, the quantum state of the system becomes pure in the limit that the wavepackets delocalize; we quantify the trade-off between localization and purity.
By fully exploiting the existence of the unitarily inequivalent representations of quantum fields, we exhibit the entanglement between inner and outer particles, with respect to the event horizon of a black hole. We compute the entanglement entropy and we find that the nonunitarity of the mapping, between the vacua in the flat and the curved frames, makes the entanglement very robust.
The black hole information problem has motivated many proposals for new physics. One idea, known as state-dependence, is that quantum mechanics must be generalized to describe the physics of black holes, and that fixed linear operators do not provide the fundamental description of experiences for infalling observers. Instead, such experiences are to be described by operators with an extra dependence on the global quantum state. We show that any implementation of this idea strong enough to remove firewalls from generic states requires massive violations of the Born rule. We also demonstrate a s…
There are two evidences for information loss during black hole evaporation: (i) a pure state evolves to a mixed state and (ii) the map from the initial state to final state is non-invertible. Any proposed resolution of the information paradox must address both these issues. The firewall argument focuses only on the first and this leads to order one deviations from the Unruh vacuum for maximally entangled black holes. The nature of the argument does not extend to black holes in pure states. It was shown by Avery, Puhm and the author that requiring the initial state to final state map to be inve…
Modes just outside the horizon of a typical old black hole are thermally entangled with distant Hawking radiation. This precludes their entangled purity with interior modes, leading to a firewall. Identifying the interior with the distant radiation ("A=R_B", "ER=EPR") can resolve the entanglement conflict. But the map must adjust for any interactions, or else the firewall will reappear if the Hawking radiation scatters off the CMB. With a self-correcting map, an infalling observer is unable to excite the vacuum near the horizon. This allows the horizon to be locally detected and so violates th…
We consider two entangled accelerating qubits coupled with real scalar fields, each described by the Unruh-Wald model. It is demonstrated that because of the Unruh effect, the bipartite entanglement of the two qubits suddenly dies when the acceleration of one or more qubits are large enough. We also consider three entangled accelerating qubits in GHZ state and in W state, with equal acceleration-frequency ratio, and found that in either state, the tripartite entanglement suddenly dies at a certain value of acceleration-frequency ratio. The equivalence between the Rindler metric and the Schwarz…
We develop a new test that provides a necessary condition for a quantum state to be smooth in the vicinity of a null surface: near-horizon modes that can be defined locally near any patch of the null surface must be correctly entangled with each other and with their counterparts across the surface. This test is considerably simpler to implement than a full computation of the renormalized stress-energy tensor. We apply this test to Reissner-Nordstrom black holes in asymptotically anti-de Sitter space and provide numerical evidence that the inner horizon of such black holes is singular in the Ha…
The near-horizon field B of an old black hole is maximally entangled with the early Hawking radiation R, by unitarity of the S-matrix. But B must be maximally entangled with the black hole interior A, by the equivalence principle. Causal patch complementarity fails to reconcile these conflicting requirements. The system B can be probed by a freely falling observer while there is still time to turn around and remain outside the black hole. Therefore, the entangled state of the BR system is dictated by unitarity even in the infalling patch. If, by monogamy of entanglement, B is not entangled wit…
We consider radiative processes of a quantum system composed by two identical two-level atoms in a black-hole background. We assume that these identical two-level atoms are placed at fixed radial distances outside a Schwarzschild black hole and interacting with a quantum electromagnetic field prepared in one of the usual vacuum states, namely the Boulware, Unruh or the Hartle-Hawking vacuum states. We study the structure of the rate of variation of the atomic energy. The intention is to identify in a quantitative way the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction to the entang…
Two entangled two-level Unruh-DeWitt detectors, which are in rest, spontaneously loose entanglement when at least any one of them is not isolated from the environment quantum fields. For eternal interaction between the detectors and environment, the spontaneous emission from the detectors' exited states and vacuum fluctuations of field influence this negative effect. Consequently, it suggests that two entangled qubits become less communicated during their free-fall towards the black hole horizon.
It has been conjectured that the dual of the eternal black hole in AdS is two entangled but disconnected CFTs. We show that the entanglement created by the process of Hawking radiation creates several challenges for this conjecture. The nature of fuzzball states suggests a different picture, where the dual to two entangled CFTs is two entangled but disconnected spacetimes. We argue for a process of `quick tunneling' where the Einstein-Rosen bridge of the eternal hole tunnels rapidly into fuzzball states, preventing the existence of the eternal hole as a semiclassical spacetime. The regions beh…
Consider a bipartite entangled system half of which falls through the event horizon of an evaporating black hole, while the other half remains coherently accessible to experiments in the exterior region. Beyond complete evaporation, the evolution of the quantum state past the Cauchy horizon cannot remain unitary, raising the questions: How can this evolution be described as a quantum map, and how is causality preserved? What are the possible effects of such nonstandard quantum evolution maps on the behavior of the entangled laboratory partner? More generally, the laws of quantum evolution unde…
Based on the work of Gao-Jafferis-Wall and Maldacena-Stanford-Yang, we observe that the time-shifted thermofield states of two entangled CFTs can be made traversable by an appropriate coupling of the two CFTs, or alternatively by the application of a modified quantum teleportation protocol. This provides evidence for the smoothness of the horizon for a large class of entangled states related to the thermofield by time-translations. The smoothness of these states has some relevance for the firewall paradox and the proposal that some observables in quantum gravity may be state-dependent. We noti…
We present the complete family of solutions of 3D gravity (Lambda<0) with two asymptotically AdS exterior regions. The solutions are constructed from data at the two boundaries, which correspond to two independent and arbitrary stress tensors T_R, \bar T_R, and T_L, \bar T_L. The two exteriors are smoothly joined on to an interior region through a regular horizon. We find CFT duals of these geometries which are entangled states of two CFT's. We compute correlators between general operators at the two boundaries and find perfect agreement between CFT and bulk calculations. We calculate and matc…
Using the eternal BTZ black hole as a concrete example, we show how spacelike singularities and horizons can be described in terms of AdS/CFT amplitudes. Our approach is based on analytically continuing amplitudes defined in Euclidean signature. This procedure yields finite Lorentzian amplitudes. The naive divergences associated with the Milne type singularity of BTZ are regulated by an $iε$ prescription inherent in the analytic continuation and a cancellation between future and past singularities. The boundary description corresponds to a tensor product of two CFTs in an entangled state, as i…
In the AdS/CFT correspondence eternal black holes can be viewed as a specific entanglement between two copies of the CFT: the thermofield double. The statistical CFT Wightman function can be computed from a geodesic between the two boundaries of the Kruskal extended black hole and therefore probes the geometry behind the horizon. We construct a kernel for the AdS3/CFT2 Wightman function that is independent of the entanglement. This kernel equals the average off-diagonal matrix element squared of a primary operator. This allows us to compute the Wightman function for an arbitrary entanglement b…
We investigate the possibility of firewalls in the Einstein-dilaton gravity model of CGHS. We use the results of the numerical simulation carried out by Ashtekar et al. to demonstrate that firewalls are absent and the horizon is drama free. We show that the lack of a firewall is consistent because the model does not satisfy one of the postulates of black hole complementarity. In particular, we show that the Hawking radiation is not pure, and is completely entangled with a long-lived remnant beyond the last ray.
The classical internal structure of spinning black holes is vastly different from that of static black holes. We consider spinning BTZ black holes, and probe their interior from the gauge theory. Utilizing the simplicity of the geometry and reverse engineering from the geodesics, we propose a thermal correlator construction which can be interpreted as arising from two entangled CFTs. By analytic continuation of these correlators, we can probe the Cauchy horizon. Correlators that capture the Cauchy horizon in our work have a structure closely related to those that capture the singularity in a n…
University of Barcelona（巴塞罗那大学）；Università degli Studi di Padova（帕多瓦大学）；INFN, Sezione di Padova（意大利国家核物理研究所帕多瓦分部）；INAF- Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova（意大利国家天体物理研究所帕多瓦天文台）；ICREA（加泰罗尼亚高级研究学院）
The relative flow of the Schwarzschild vs. the proper time during the classical evolution of a collapsing shell in the Schwarzschild coordinates practically forces us to interpret black hole formation as a highly non-local quantum process in which a shell/anti-shell pair is created within the incipient horizon, thus canceling out the original collapsing shell exactly at the horizon. By studying quantum fields in the black hole background, we reveal similar non-local effects. Among other things, the outgoing member of the Hawking pair very quickly becomes entangled with the black hole geometry …
We propose a model with multiple qubits that reproduces the thermal properties of 4-dimensional (4-dim) Schwarzschild black holes (BHs) by simultaneously taking account of the emission of Hawking particles and the zero-energy soft hair evaporation at horizon. The results verify that the entanglement entropy between a qubit and other subsystems, including emitted radiation, is much larger than the BH entropy analogue of the qubit, as opposed to the Page curve prediction. Our result suggests that early Hawking radiation is entangled with soft hair, and that late Hawking radiation can be highly e…
The ER = EPR correspondence relates a superposition of entangled, disconnected spacetimes to a connected spacetime with an Einstein-Rosen bridge. We construct examples in which both sides may be described by weakly-coupled string theory. The relation between them is given by a Lorentzian continuation of the FZZ duality of the two-dimensional Euclidean black hole CFT in one example, and in another example by continuation of a similar duality that we propose for the asymptotic Euclidean AdS3 black hole. This gives a microscopic understanding of ER = EPR: one has a worldsheet duality between stri…
We discuss how under certain conditions the black hole information puzzle and the (related) arguments that firewalls are a typical feature of black holes can break down. We first review the arguments of AMPS favoring firewalls, focusing on entanglements in a simple toy model for a black hole and the Hawking radiation. By introducing a large and inaccessible system entangled with the black hole (representing perhaps a de Sitter stretched horizon or inaccessible part of a landscape) we show complementarity can be restored and firewalls can be avoided throughout the black hole's evolution. Under …
We investigate the quantum deformation of the Wheeler--DeWitt equation of a Schwarzchild black hole. Specifically, the quantum deformed black hole is a quantized model constructed from the quantum Heisenberg--Weyl $U_q(h_4)$ group. We show that the event horizon area and the mass are quantized, degenerate, and bounded. The degeneracy of states indicates entangled quantum black hole/white hole states. Accordingly, quantum deformation provides a new framework to examine Einstein--Rosen wormhole solutions. Besides, we obtain the mass, the temperature, and the entropy of the q-deformed quantum Sch…
For a Kerr black hole perturbed by a particle on the "corotating" circular orbit (angular velocity equal to that of the unperturbed event horizon), the black hole remains in equilibrium in the sense that the perturbed event horizon is a Killing horizon of the helical Killing field. The associated surface gravity is constant over the horizon and should correspond to the physical Hawking temperature. We calculate the perturbation in surface gravity/temperature, finding it negative: the moon has a cooling effect on the black hole. We also compute the change in horizon angular frequency, which is …
We investigate the Hawking effect on entangled fields. By considering a scalar field which is in a two-mode squeezed state from the point of view of freely falling (Kruskal) observers crossing the horizon of a Schwarzschild black hole, we study the degradation of quantum and classical correlations in the state from the perspective of Schwarzschild observers confined outside the horizon. Due to monogamy constraints on the entanglement distribution, we show that the lost bipartite entanglement is recovered as multipartite entanglement among modes inside and outside the horizon. In the limit of a…
We examine a possibility that, when a black hole is formed, the information on the collapsed star is stored as the entanglement entropy between the outside and the thin region (of the order of the Planck length) of the inside the horizon. For this reason, we call this as the entanglement entropy of the black hole ``horizon''. We construct two models, one is in the Minkowski spacetime and the other is in the Rindler wedge. To calculate the entropy explicitly, we assume that the thin regions of the order of the Planck length of the outside and inside the horizon are completely entangled by quant…
We calculate, using our recently proposed semiclassical framework, the quantum state of the Hawking pairs that are produced during the evaporation of a black hole (BH). Our framework adheres to the standard rules of quantum mechanics and incorporates the quantum fluctuations of the collapsing shell spacetime in Hawking's original calculation, while accounting for back-reaction effects. We argue that the negative-energy Hawking modes need to be regularly integrated out; and so these are effectively subsumed by the BH and, as a result, the number of coherent negative-energy modes $N_{coh}$ at an…
Quantum fluctuations in the background geometry of a black hole are shown to affect the propagation of matter states falling into the black hole in a foliation that corresponds to observations purely outside the horizon. A state that starts as a Minkowski vacuum at past null infinity gets entangled with the gravity sector, so that close to the horizon it can be represented by a statistical ensemble of orthogonal states. We construct an operator connecting the different states and comment on the possible physical meaning of the above construction. The induced energy-momentum tensor of these sta…
We consider black-hole evaporation from a hidden-variables perspective. It is suggested that Hawking information loss, associated with the transition from a pure to a mixed quantum state, is compensated for by the creation of deviations from Born-rule probabilities outside the event horizon. The resulting states have non-standard or 'nonequilibrium' distributions of hidden variables, with a specific observable signature - a breakdown of the sinusoidal modulation of quantum probabilities for two-state systems. Outgoing Hawking radiation is predicted to contain statistical anomalies outside the …
In previous work, two of us constructed the holographic dual of a single Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) pair in maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. Here we extend that work in two directions. First, we use a Randall-Sundrum brane to couple the entangled pair to dynamical gravity. Second, we consider the entangled pair in the background of a black hole with the particles on opposite sides of the horizon, turning the EPR pair into a Hawking pair. We give general arguments that ER=EPR should be understood as a duality between two equivalent descriptions of the same physical reality.
The black-hole information paradox has fueled a fascinating effort to reconcile the predictions of general relativity and those of quantum mechanics. Gravitational considerations teach us that black holes must trap everything that falls into them. Quantum mechanically the mass of a black hole leaks away as featureless (Hawking) radiation. However, if Hawking's analysis turned out to be accurate then the information would be irretrievably lost and a fundamental axiom of quantum mechanics, that of unitary evolution, would likewise fail. Here we show that the information about the matter that col…
We study a thermofield double type entangled state on two disjoint universes $A$ and $B$, where one of the universes is asymptotically flat containing a black hole. As we increase the entanglement temperature, this black hole receives back-reaction from the stress energy tensor of the state. This results in lengthening of the wormhole region in the black hole interior, and decreasing of its horizon area, both of which are key features of an evaporating black hole. We then compute the entanglement entropy on the universe $A$ through the island formula, and argue that it naturally follows the Pa…
In anti-de Sitter space a highly accelerating observer perceives a Rindler horizon. The two Rindler wedges in AdS_{d+1} are holographically dual to an entangled conformal field theory that lives on two boundaries with geometry R x H_{d-1}. For AdS_3, the holographic duality is especially tractable, allowing quantum-gravitational aspects of Rindler horizons to be probed. We recover the thermodynamics of Rindler-AdS space directly from the boundary conformal field theory. We derive the temperature from the two-point function and obtain the Rindler entropy density precisely, including numerical f…
The firewall paradox is often presented as arising from double entanglement, but I argue that more generally the paradox is double purity. Near-horizon modes are purified by the interior, in the infalling vacuum. Hence they cannot also be pure alone, or in combination with any third system, as demanded by unitarity. This conflict arises independently of the Page time, for entangled and for pure states. It implies that identifications of Hilbert spaces cannot resolve the paradox. Traditional complementarity requires the unitary identification of infalling matter with a scrambled subsystem of th…
We implement the entanglement harvesting protocol, in which two Unruh-DeWitt detectors become entangled through local interactions with a quantum field, for the first time in the vicinity of a black hole. Our study, focusing on the BTZ black hole, reveals that black holes inhibit entanglement harvesting. The entanglement harvested rapidly falls to zero when two detectors with fixed proper separation approach the horizon. This effect is a combination of black hole radiation and gravitational red shift, both generic properties of horizons, suggesting it is a general result for black holes.
A reformulation of the calculation of the semi-classical energy-momentum tensor on a Schwarzschild background, the Bousso covariant entropy bound, and the ER=EPR conjecture of Maldacena and Susskind taken together suggest a scenario for the evaporation of a large spherically symmetric black hole formed in gravitational collapse in which 1) the classical r = 0 singularity is replaced by an initially small non-singular core inside an inner apparent horizon, 2) the radius of the core grows with time due to the increasing entanglement between Hawking radiation quanta outside the black hole and the…
Black hole (BH) evaporation is caused by creation of entangled particle-antiparticle pairs near the event horizon, with one carrying positive energy to infinity and the other carrying negative energy into the BH. Since under the event horizon, particles always move toward the BH center, they can only be absorbed but not emitted at the center. This breaks absorption-emission symmetry and, as a result, annihilation of the particle at the BH center is described by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. We show that due to entanglement between photons moving inside and outside the event horizon, nonunitary …
