Inspired by the Hayden-Preskill protocol for black hole evaporation, we consider the dynamics of a quantum many-body qudit system coupled to an external environment, where the time evolution is driven by the continuous limit of certain $2$-local random unitary circuits. We study both cases where the unitaries are chosen with and without a conserved $U(1)$ charge and focus on two aspects of the dynamics. First, we study analytically and numerically the growth of the entanglement entropy of the system, showing that two different time scales appear: one is intrinsic to the internal dynamics (the scrambling time), while the other depends on the system-environment coupling. In the presence of a $U(1)$ conserved charge, we show that the entanglement follows a Page-like behavior in time: it begins to decrease in the middle stage of the "evaporation", and decreases monotonically afterwards. Second, we study the time needed to retrieve information initially injected in the system from measurements on the environment qudits. Based on explicit numerical computations, we characterize such time both when the retriever has control over the initial configuration or not, showing that different scales appear in the two cases.
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 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…
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.
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.
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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 …
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…
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…
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…
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.
Random quantum circuits are proficient information scramblers and efficient generators of randomness, rapidly approximating moments of the unitary group. We study the convergence of local random quantum circuits to unitary $k$-designs. Employing a statistical mechanical mapping, we give an exact expression of the distance to forming an approximate design as a lattice partition function. In the statistical mechanics model, the approach to randomness has a simple interpretation in terms of domain walls extending through the circuit. We analytically compute the second moment, showing that random …
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…
The entanglement in operator space is a well established measure for the complexity of the quantum many-body dynamics. In particular, that of local operators has recently been proposed as dynamical chaos indicator, i.e. as a quantity able to discriminate between quantum systems with integrable and chaotic dynamics. For chaotic systems the local-operator entanglement is expected to grow linearly in time, while it is expected to grow at most logarithmically in the integrable case. Here we study local-operator entanglement in dual-unitary quantum circuits, a class of "statistically solvable" quan…
We study a model of free fermions on a chain with dynamics generated by random unitary gates acting on nearest neighbor bonds and present an exact calculation of time-ordered and out-of-time-ordered correlators. We consider three distinct cases: the random circuit with spatio-temporal disorder (i) with and (ii) without particle number conservation and (iii) the particle non-conserving case with purely temporal disorder. In all three cases, temporal disorder causes diffusive operator spreading and $\sim\sqrt{t}$ entanglement growth. This is in sharp contrast to Anderson localization for the cas…
We study the scrambling of quantum information in local random unitary circuits by focusing on the tripartite information proposed by Hosur et al. We provide exact results for the averaged Rényi-$2$ tripartite information in two cases: (i) the local gates are Haar random and (ii) the local gates are dual-unitary and randomly sampled from a single-site Haar-invariant measure. We show that the latter case defines a one-parameter family of circuits, and prove that for a "maximally chaotic" subset of this family quantum information is scrambled faster than in the Haar-random case. Our approach is …
Deterministic classical dynamical systems have an ergodic hierarchy, from ergodic through mixing, to Bernoulli systems that are "as random as a coin-toss". Dual-unitary circuits have been recently introduced as solvable models of many-body nonintegrable quantum chaotic systems having a hierarchy of ergodic properties. We extend this to include the apex of a putative quantum ergodic hierarchy which is Bernoulli, in the sense that correlations of single and two-particle observables vanish at space-time separated points. We derive a condition based on the entangling power $e_p(U)$ of the basic tw…
The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis provides to date the most successful description of thermalization in isolated quantum systems by conjecturing statistical properties of matrix elements of typical operators in the (quasi-)energy eigenbasis. Here we study the distribution of matrix elements for a class of operators in dual-unitary quantum circuits in dependence of the frequency associated with the corresponding eigenstates. We provide an exact asymptotic expression for the spectral function, i.e., the second moment of this frequency resolved distribution. The latter is obtained from the…
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…
Quantum complexity and localization in random and time-periodic unitary circuits
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics（Perimeter理论物理研究所）；University of Waterloo（滑铁卢大学）；Indian Institute of Sciences（印度科学学院）；University of Bristol（布里斯托大学）；Jagiellonian University（亚捷隆大学）；Indian Institute of Science（印度科学学院）
Time evolution of quantum many-body systems typically leads to a state with maximal entanglement allowed by symmetries. Two distinct routes to impede entanglement growth are inducing localization via spatial disorder, or subjecting the system to non-unitary evolution, e.g., via projective measurements. Here we employ the idea of space-time rotation of a circuit to explore the relation between systems that fall into these two classes. In particular, by space-time rotating unitary Floquet circuits that display a localization transition, we construct non-unitary circuits that display a rich varie…
The issue of unitary evolution during creation and evaporation of a black hole remains controversial. We~argue that some prominent cures are more troubling than the disease, demonstrate that their central element---forming of the event horizon before the evaporation begins---is not necessarily true, and describe a fully coupled matter-gravity system which is manifestly unitary.
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 introduce a novel class of quantum circuits that are unitary along three distinct "arrows of time". These dynamics share some of the analytical tractability of "dual-unitary" circuits, while exhibiting distinctive and richer phenomenology. We find that two-point correlations in these dynamics are strictly confined to three directions in $(1+1)$-dimensional spacetime -- the two light cone edges, $δx=\pm vδt$, and the static worldline $δx=0$. Along these directions, correlation functions are obtained exactly in terms of quantum channels built from the individual gates that make up the circuit…
We introduce a family of dual-unitary circuits in 1+1 dimensions which constitute a discrete analog of conformal field theories. These circuits are quantum cellular automata which are invariant under the joint action of Lorentz and scale transformations. Dual unitaries are four-legged tensors which satisfy the unitarity condition across the time as well as the space direction, a property that makes the model mathematically tractable. Using dual unitaries too, we construct tensor-network states for our 1+1 model, which are interpreted as spatial slices of curved 2+1 discrete geometries, where t…
We develop an microscopic model of the M-theory Schwarzschild black hole using the Banks-Fischler-Shenker-Susskind Matrix formulation of quantum gravity. The underlying dynamics is known to be chaotic, which allows us to use methods from Random Matrix Theory and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics to propose a coarse-grained bottom-up picture of the event horizon -- and the associated Hawking evaporation phenomenon. The analysis is possible due to a hierarchy between the various timescales at work. Event horizon physics is found to be non-local at the Planck scale, and we demonstrate how non…
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…
We consider a massless, minimally coupled scalar field propagating through the geometry of a black 3-brane in an asymptotically $AdS_5 \times S^5$ space. The wave equation for modes traveling purely in the holographic direction reduces to a Heun equation and the corresponding greybody factor is obtained numerically. Approximations valid in the low- and high-frequency regimes are also obtained analytically. The greybody factor is then used to determine the rate of evaporation of these large black holes in the context of the evaporon model proposed in \cite{Rocha:2008fe}. This setting represents…
We consider the black hole information problem in an explicitly defined spacetime modelling black hole evaporation. Using this context we review basic aspects of the problem, with a particular effort to be unambiguous about subtle topics, for instance precisely what is meant by entropy in various circumstances. We then focus on questions of unitarity, and argue that commonly invoked semiclassical statements of long term, evaporation time, and Page time "unitarity" may all be violated even if physics is fundamentally unitary. This suggests that there is no horizon firewall. We discuss how the p…
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 investigate a class of brickwork-like quantum circuits on chains of $d-$level systems (qudits) that share the so-called `dual unitarity' property. Namely, these systems generate unitary dynamics not only when propagating in the time direction, but also when propagating in the space direction. We consider space-time homogeneous (Floquet) circuits and perturb them with a quenched single-site disorder, i.e. by applying independent single site random unitaries drawn from arbitrary non-singular distribution over ${\rm SU}(d)$, e.g. one concentrated around the identity, after each layer of the ci…
Quantifying quantum states' complexity is a key problem in various subfields of science, from quantum computing to black-hole physics. We prove a prominent conjecture by Brown and Susskind about how random quantum circuits' complexity increases. Consider constructing a unitary from Haar-random two-qubit quantum gates. Implementing the unitary exactly requires a circuit of some minimal number of gates - the unitary's exact circuit complexity. We prove that this complexity grows linearly with the number of random gates, with unit probability, until saturating after exponentially many random gate…
The formation and evaporation of a black hole can be viewed as a scattering process in Quantum Gravity. Semiclassical arguments indicate that the process should be non-unitary, and that all the information of the original quantum state forming the black hole should be lost after the black hole has completely evaporated, except for its mass, charge and angular momentum. This would imply a violation of basic principles of quantum mechanics. We review some proposed resolutions to the problem, including developments in string theory and a recent proposal by Hawking. We also suggest a novel approac…
We point out that two-dimensional Russo-Susskind-Thorlacius (RST) model for evaporating black holes is locally equivalent - at the full quantum level - to flat-space Jackiw-Teitelboim (JT) gravity that was recently shown to be unitary. Globally, the two models differ by a reflective spacetime boundary added in the RST model. Treating the boundary as a local and covariant deformation of quantum JT theory, we develop sensible semiclassical description of evaporating RST black holes. Nevertheless, our semiclassical solutions fail to resolve the information recovery problem, and they do not indica…
One-parameter interpolations between any two unitary matrices (e.g., quantum gates) $U_1$ and $U_2$ along efficient paths contained in the unitary group are constructed. Motivated by applications, we propose the continuous unitary path $U(θ)$ obtained from the QR-factorization \[ U(θ)R(θ)=(1-θ)A+θB, \] where $U_1 R_1=A$ and $U_2 R_2=B$ are the QR-factorizations of $A$ and $B$, and $U(θ)$ is a unitary for all $θ$ with $U(0)=U_1$ and $U(1)=U_2$. The QR-algorithm is modified to, instead of $U(θ)$, output a matrix whose columns are proportional to the corresponding columns of $U(θ)$ and whose entr…
