Related papers: Black Holes: Eliminating Information or Illuminati…

The complete gravitational collapse of a body in general relativity will result in the formation of a black hole. Although the black hole is classically stable, quantum particle creation processes will result in the emission of Hawking…

We discuss some of the drawbacks of using event horizons to define black holes and suggest ways in which black holes can be described without event horizons, using trapping horizons. We show that these trapping horizons give rise to…

Almost all of the entropy in the universe is in the form of Bekenstein--Hawking (BH) entropy of super-massive black holes. This entropy, if it satisfies Boltzmann's equation $S=\log{\cal N}$, hence represents almost all the accessible phase…

Black holes are among the most extreme objects that can be found in the Universe and an ideal laboratory for testing fundamental physics. This article will briefly review the basic properties of black holes as expected from general…

Hawking's 1974 calculation of thermal emission from a classical black hole led to his 1976 proposal that information may be lost from our universe as a pure quantum state collapses gravitationally into a black hole, which then evaporates…

It has been almost 40 years since the proposal of the idea that Hawking radiation of black holes does not lead to a complete evaporation but rather a "remnant" state. Though traditionally viewed with great criticisms especially from the…

Many relativists have been long convinced that black hole evaporation leads to information loss or remnants. String theorists have however not been too worried about the issue, largely due to a belief that the Hawking argument for…

Black holes are by definition black, and therefore cannot be directly observed by using electromagnetic radiations. Convincing identification of black holes must necessarily depend on the identification of a very specially behaving matter…

The black hole information loss paradox has long been one of the most studied and fascinating aspects of black hole physics. In its latest incarnation, it takes the form of the firewall paradox. In this paper, we first give a conceptually…

Black holes harbor a spacetime singularity of infinite curvature, where classical spacetime physics breaks down, and current theory cannot predict what will happen. However, the singularity is invisible from the outside because strong…

We investigate the physics of black holes in the light of the quantum theoretical framework proposed in [1]. It is argued that black holes are completely non-local objects, and that the only one which really exists is the universe itself.

Event horizons are the defining feature of classical black holes. They are the key ingredient of the information loss paradox which, as paradoxes in quantum foundations, is built on a combination of predictions of quantum theory and…

Since the discovery of Hawking radiation, its consistency with quantum theory has been widely questioned. In the widely described picture, irrespective of what initial state a black hole starts with before collapsing, it eventually evolves…

We present a paradox for evaporating black holes, which is common in most schemes trying to avoid the firewall by decoupling early and late radiation. At the late stage of the black hole evaporation, the decoupling between early and late…

We review recent progress on the information paradox. We explain why exponentially small correlations in the radiation emitted by a black hole are sufficient to resolve the original paradox put forward by Hawking. We then describe a…

The gravity-scalar field system in spherical symmetry provides a natural setting for exploring gravitational collapse and its aftermath in quantum gravity. In a canonical approach, we give constructions of the constraint and Hamiltonian…

A recent understanding on how quantum effects may affect black-hole evolution opens new scenarios for dark matter, in connection with the presence of black holes in the very early universe. Quantum fluctuations of the geometry allow for…

A recent article by Mathur attempts a "precise formulation" for the paradox of black hole information loss [S. D. Mathur, arXiv:1108.0302v2 (hep-th)]. We point out that a key component of the above work, which refers to entangled pairs…

First, the relation between black holes and limitations on information of other systems is developed. After reviewing the relation of entropy to information, we derive the entropy bound, review its applications to cosmology and its…

These are the lecture notes for an introductory course on black holes and some aspects of their interaction with the classical and quantum world. The focus is on phenomena of "fundamental physics" in the immediate surroundings of the black…