English

Entropy creation inside black holes points to observer complementarity

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2009-09-28 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Heating processes inside large black holes can produce tremendous amounts of entropy. Locality requires that this entropy adds on space-like surfaces, but the resulting entropy (10^10 times the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy in an example presented in the companion paper) exceeds the maximum entropy that can be accommodated by the black hole's degrees of freedom. Observer complementarity, which proposes a proliferation of non-local identifications inside the black hole, allows the entropy to be accommodated as long as individual observers inside the black hole see less than the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. In the specific model considered with huge entropy production, we show that individual observers do see less than the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy, offering strong support for observer complementarity.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0903.2290,
  title  = {Entropy creation inside black holes points to observer complementarity},
  author = {Gavin Polhemus and Andrew J. S. Hamilton and Colin S. Wallace},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0903.2290},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

13 pages. This is a companion paper to arXiv:0801.4415; Added references

R2 v1 2026-06-21T12:40:05.406Z