English

An Apologia for Firewalls

High Energy Physics - Theory 2015-06-15 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We address proposed alternatives to the black hole firewall. We show that embedding the interior Hilbert space of an old black hole into the Hilbert space of the early radiation is inconsistent, as is embedding the semi-classical interior of an AdS black hole into any dual CFT Hilbert space. We develop the use of large AdS black holes as a system to sharpen the firewall argument. We also reiterate arguments that unitary non-local theories can avoid firewalls only if the non-localities are suitably dramatic.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1304.6483,
  title  = {An Apologia for Firewalls},
  author = {Ahmed Almheiri and Donald Marolf and Joseph Polchinski and Douglas Stanford and James Sully},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1304.6483},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

35 pages. v2: minor clarifications

R2 v1 2026-06-22T00:05:17.715Z