Complementarity Endures: No Firewall for an Infalling Observer
Abstract
We argue that the complementarity picture, as interpreted as a reference frame change represented in quantum gravitational Hilbert space, does not suffer from the "firewall paradox" recently discussed by Almheiri, Marolf, Polchinski, and Sully. A quantum state described by a distant observer evolves unitarily, with the evolution law well approximated by semi-classical field equations in the region away from the (stretched) horizon. And yet, a classical infalling observer does not see a violation of the equivalence principle, and thus a firewall, at the horizon. The resolution of the paradox lies in careful considerations on how a (semi-)classical world arises in unitary quantum mechanics describing the whole universe/multiverse.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1207.6626,
title = {Complementarity Endures: No Firewall for an Infalling Observer},
author = {Yasunori Nomura and Jaime Varela and Sean J. Weinberg},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1207.6626},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
11 pages, 1 figure; clarifications and minor revisions; v3: a small calculation added for clarification; v4: some corrections, conclusion unchanged