Related papers: The Membrane Paradigm and Firewalls
Quantum gravity phenomenology suggests the interesting possibility that black holes are not eternal. Collapse could be halted by some unknown mechanism, or Hawking radiation might leave behind a regular spacetime. Here we investigate a…
Classically, the black hole (BH) horizon is a rigid surface of infinite redshift; whereas the uncertainty principle dictates that the semiclassical (would-be) horizon cannot be fixed in space nor can it exhibit any divergences. We propose…
The supposed information paradox for black holes is based on the fundamental misunderstanding that black holes are usefully defined by event horizons. Understood in terms of locally defined trapping horizons, the paradox disappears:…
While extreme black hole spacetimes with smooth horizons are known at the level of mathematics, we argue that the horizons of physical extreme black holes are effectively singular. Test particles encounter a singularity the moment they…
Black hole firewall paradox is an inconsistency between four postulates in black hole physics: (1) the unitary evolution in quantum systems, (2) application of the semi-classical field theory in low curvature backgrounds, (3) statistical…
Questions about black holes in quantum gravity generally presuppose the presence of a horizon. Recently Carlip has shown that enforcing an initial data surface to be a horizon leads to the correct form for the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of…
Black holes have the peculiar and intriguing property of having an event horizon, a one-way membrane causally separating their internal region from the rest of the Universe. Today astrophysical observations provide some evidence for the…
A class of observers is introduced that interpolate smoothly between the Schwarzschild observer, stable at spatial infinity, and the Kerr-Schild observer, who falls into a black hole. For these observers the passing of the event and inner…
We examine the dissipation of infalling particles near black holes under the assumption that the equivalence principle breaks down at the stretched horizon. This violation allows partial reflection of particles just outside the event…
The prevalent opinion that infalling objects can freely cross a black hole horizon is based on the assumptions that the horizon region is governed by classical General Relativity and by specific singular coordinate transformations it is…
We undertake a first-principles analysis of the thermodynamics of a small body near a black hole horizon. In particular, we study the paradigmatic system of a quantum ideal gas in a small box hovering over the Schwarzschild horizon. We…
If quantum gravity does not lead to a breakdown of predictability, then Almheiri, Marolf, Polchinski and Sully (AMPS) have argued that an observer falling into a black hole can perform an experiment which verifies a violation of…
We consider spherically-symmetric black holes in semiclassical gravity. For a collapsing radiating thin shell we derive a sufficient condition on the exterior geometry that ensures that a black hole is not formed. This is also a sufficient…
If a system falls through a black hole horizon, then its information is lost to an observer at infinity. But we argue that the {\it accessible} information is lost {\it before} the horizon is crossed. The temperature of the hole limits…
A "temporal analogue" of the standard Poynting-Robertson effect is analyzed as induced by a dust of particles (instead of a gas of photons) surrounding a Schwarzschild black hole. Test particles inside this cloud undergo acceleration…
It is well-known that a particle falling into a black hole will definitely reach the center in finite proper time if it enters the sphere of radius $3r_{s}/2$ where $r_{s}$ is the Schwarzschild radius. It is usually assumed that once the…
In this paper we aim to provide new examples of the application and the generality of the membrane paradigm. The membrane paradigm is a formalism for studying the event horizon of black holes. After analyzing it with some technical details…
For distant observers black holes are trapped spacetime domains bounded by apparent horizons. We review properties of the near-horizon geometry emphasizing the consequences of two common implicit assumptions of semiclassical physics. The…
In the firewall proposal, it is assumed that the firewall lies near the event horizon and should not be observable except by infalling observers, who are presumably terminated at the firewall. However, if the firewall is located near where…
It is argued that it takes an infinite amount of external time for a freely falling test particle to reach the event horizon of a classical black hole (which happens in finite faller time), and that in this time the black hole would have…