English

What the information paradox is {\it not}

High Energy Physics - Theory 2011-08-05 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

There still exist many confusions about the black hole information paradox and its resolution. We first give a precise formulation of the paradox, in four steps A-D. Then we examine several proposals for resolving the paradox. We note that in each case one of these four steps has been ignored, so that the proposal does not really target the essence of the paradox. Finally, we give a brief summary of the fuzzball construction and argue that it resolves the paradox in string theory. This resolution contains a deep lesson -- the phase space of quantum gravity is so large that the measure in the path integral can compete with the classical action for macroscopic objects undergoing gravitational collapse.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1108.0302,
  title  = {What the information paradox is {\it not}},
  author = {Samir D. Mathur},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1108.0302},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

46 pages, 4 figures, references added

R2 v1 2026-06-21T18:44:45.901Z