Related papers: The subtle unphysical hypothesis of the firewall t…

The central challenge in trying to resolve the firewall paradox is to identify excitations in the near-horizon zone of a black hole that can carry information without injuring a freely falling observer. By analyzing the problem from the…

An insightful viewpoint was proposed by Susskind about AMPS firewall: the region behind the firewall does not exist and the firewall is an extension of the singularity. In this work, we provided a possible picture of this idea by combining…

This paper explores the enduring black hole information and firewall paradoxes, challenges that have prompted many proposals, conjectures, and theories. Noteworthy among these are the ER = EPR conjecture and AdS/CFT correspondence, which…

One of the most fundamental features of a black hole in general relativity is its event horizon: a boundary from which nothing can escape. There has been a recent surge of interest in the nature of these event horizons and their local…

Although we have convincing evidence that a black hole bears an entropy proportional to its surface (horizon) area, the ``statistical mechanical'' explanation of this entropy remains unknown. Two basic questions in this connection are: what…

The Black Hole Uncertainty Principle correspondence proposes a connection between the Uncertainty Principle on microscopic scales and black holes on macroscopic scales. This is manifested in a unified expression for the Compton wavelength…

We discuss how under certain conditions the black hole information puzzle and the (related) arguments that firewalls are a typical feature of black holes can break down. We first review the arguments of AMPS favoring firewalls, focusing on…

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 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…

Black hole entropy is shown to be a consequence of restricting our description of physics to the exterior of black holes. This precludes the need for a statistical mechanical description of this entropy in terms of microstates.

Black hole complementarity, as originally formulated in the 1990's by Preskill, 't Hooft, and myself is now being challenged by the Almheiri-Marolf-Polchinski-Sully firewall argument. The AMPS argument relies on an implicit assumption---the…

The postulates of black hole complementarity do not imply a firewall for infalling observers at a black hole horizon. The dynamics of the stretched horizon, that scrambles and re-emits information, determines whether infalling observers…

Two interesting hypotheses about black holes have been proposed. The older one states that microscopic black holes can be accountable for the observed dark matter density. The newer one states that black holes are coupled to the expansion…

The concept of transparent and opaque horizons is defined. One example of opaqueness is the presence of a firewall. Two apparently contradictory statements are reconciled: The overwhelming number of black hole states have opaque horizons;…

We present a quantum theory of black hole (and other) horizons, in which the standard assumptions of complementarity are preserved without contradicting information theoretic considerations. After the scrambling time, the quantum mechanical…

Almheiri, Marolf, Polchinski, and Sully argued that, for a consistent black hole evaporation process, the horizon of a sufficiently old black hole should be replaced by a "firewall" at which an infalling observer burns up, which obviously…

I present a viewpoint on black hole thermodynamics according to which the entropy: derives from horizon "degrees of freedom"; is finite because the deep structure of spacetime is discrete; is "objective" thanks to the distinguished coarse…

The firewall was introduced into black hole evaporation scenarios as a deus ex machina designed to break entanglements and preserve unitarity (Almheiri et.al., 2013). Here we show that the firewall actually exists and does break…

Almheiri, Marolf, Polchinski, and Sully, recently claimed that once a black hole has radiated more than half its initial entropy (the Page time), the horizon is replaced by a "firewall" at which infalling observers burn up, in apparent…

We argue that the entropy of a black hole is due to the entanglement of matter fields and gravitons across the horizon. While the entanglement entropy of the vacuum is divergent because of UV correlations, we show that low-energy…