Related papers: Quantum nature of black holes
Black holes are extreme manifestations of general relativity, so one might hope that exotic quantum effects would be amplified in their vicinities, perhaps providing clues to quantum gravity. The commonly accepted treatment of quantum…
Bringing gravity into a quantum-mechanical framework is likely the most profound remaining problem in fundamental physics. The "unitarity crisis" for black hole evolution appears to be a key facet of this problem, whose resolution will…
Quantum entanglement lies at the heart of quantum information theory, with applications to quantum computing, teleportation, cryptography and communication. In the apparently separate world of quantum gravity, the Hawking effect of…
One of the main goals of contemporary theoretical physics is to find the quantum theory of gravity. There are various working hypotheses, mostly operating in the regime of high-energy physics well above the reach of particle accelerators.…
Black holes are more than just odd-looking curiosities in gravity theory. They uniquely intertwine the basic principles of General Relativity with those of Quantum Theory. Just by demanding that they nevertheless obey acceptable laws of…
We study the backreaction of quantum fields induced through the vacuum polarization and the conformal anomaly on the collapse of a thin shell of dust. It is shown that the final fate of the collapse process depends on the physical…
Quantum gravity may allow black holes to tunnel into white holes. If so, the lifetime of a black hole could be shorter than the one given by Hawking evaporation, solving the information paradox. More interestingly, this could open to a new…
The definition of matter states on spacelike hypersurfaces of a 1+1 dimensional black hole spacetime is considered. The effect of small quantum fluctuations of the mass of the black hole due to the quantum nature of the infalling matter is…
We discuss the interior of a black hole in quantum gravity, in which black holes form and evaporate unitarily. The interior spacetime appears in the sense of complementarity because of special features revealed by the microscopic degrees of…
Quantum fluctuations in the background geometry of a black hole are shown to affect the propagation of matter states falling into the black hole in a foliation that corresponds to observations purely outside the horizon. A state that starts…
It has recently been suggested that black holes may be described as condensates of weakly interacting gravitons at a critical point, exhibiting strong quantum effects. In this paper, we study a model system of attractive bosons in one…
We give a progress report of our research on spacetime fluctuations induced by quantum fields in an evaporating black hole and a black hole in quasi-equilibrium with its Hawking radiation. We note the main issues involved in these two…
Quantum considerations have led many theorists to believe that classical black hole physics is modified not just deep inside black holes but at {\it horizon scales}, or even further outward. The near-horizon regime has just begun to be…
A succinct summary is given of the problem of reconciling observation of black hole-like objects with quantum mechanics. If quantum black holes behave like subsystems, and also decay, their information must be transferred to their…
We study scattering on the black hole horizon in a partial wave basis, with an impact parameter of the order of the Schwarzschild radius or less. This resembles the strong gravity regime where quantum gravitational effects appear. The…
Black Holes are possibly the most enigmatic objects in our Universe. From their detection in gravitational waves upon their mergers, to their snapshot eating at the centres of galaxies, black hole astrophysics has undergone an observational…
A key test of any quantum theory of gravity is its ability to reproduce the known thermodynamic properties of black holes. A statistical mechanical description of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy once seemed remote, but today we suffer an…
The basic features of a quantum field theory which is Poincar\'e invariant, gauge invariant, finite and unitary to all orders of perturbation theory are reviewed. Quantum gravity is finite and unitary to all orders of perturbation theory.…
We study the decoherence induced by near-extremal charged black holes on quantum systems in their exterior. Specifically, we analyze a thought experiment recently discussed in the literature, where the quantum system is a charged particle…
Quantum gravity is likely the deepest problem facing current physics. While traditionally associated with short distance nonrenormalizability, it is evident that the long distance problem of unitarity, arising at high energies with black…