Related papers: The Black Hole Information Paradox
'Th'e 'S'tatistical 'm'echanician 'i'n 'th'e 's'treet (our Th. Smiths) must be surprised upon hearing popular versions of some of today's most discussed paradoxes in astronomy and cosmology. In fact, rather standard reminders of the meaning…
The entropy and information puzzles arising from black holes cannot be resolved if quantum gravity effects remain confined to a microscopic scale. We use concrete computations in nonperturbative string theory to argue for three kinds of…
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…
Black hole event horizons and cosmological event horizons share many properties, making it natural to ask whether our recent advances in understanding black holes generalize to cosmology. To this end, we discuss a paradox that occurs if…
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…
A first-principles approach to the unitarity problem for black holes is systematically explored, based on the postulates of 1) quantum mechanics 2) the ability to approximately locally divide quantum gravitational systems into subsystems 3)…
We propose a combination of two mechanisms that can resolve the black hole information paradox. The first process is that the black hole shrinks by a first order transition, since we assume the entropy is discontinuous. The black hole…
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…
We provide a pedagogical introduction to the concepts underlying black hole information loss, intended for readers familiar with special relativity and quantum mechanics. We emphasize that there is no paradox of information loss, and that…
I review the information loss paradox that was first formulated by Hawking, and discuss possible ways of resolving it. All proposed solutions have serious drawbacks. I conclude that the information loss paradox may well presage a revolution…
Interest in the black hole information paradox has recently been catalyzed by the newer "firewall" argument. The crux of the updated argument is that previous solutions which relied on observer complementarity are in violation of the…
Semiclassical reasoning suggests that the process by which an object collapses into a black hole and then evaporates by emitting Hawking radiation may destroy information, a problem often referred to as the black hole information paradox.…
Forty years after the discovery of Hawking radiation, its exact nature remains elusive. If Hawking radiation does not carry any information out from the ever shrinking black hole, it seems that unitarity is violated once the black hole…
In semiclassical gravity, the final state of black-hole evaporation cannot be described by a pure state. Nevertheless, we point out that the system can be described by a generalized pure state, which is not defined on a 3-dimensional…
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…
The main purpose of this work is to build classically stationary bubbles, within the thin-shell formalism, which are unstable under quantum effects; they either collapse into a black hole or expand. Thus, the final state can be thought of a…
The black hole information paradox is one of the most important issues in theoretical physics. We review some recent progress using string theory in understanding the nature of black hole microstates. For all cases where these microstates…
During the past three decades investigators have unveiled a number of deep connections between physical information and black holes whose consequences for ordinary systems go beyond what has been deduced purely from the axioms of…
To ask a question about a black hole in quantum gravity, one must restrict initial or boundary data to ensure that a black hole is actually present. For two-dimensional dilaton gravity, and probably a much wider class of theories, I show…
This lecture reviews the black hole information paradox and briefly appraises some proposed resolutions in view of developments in string theory. It goes on to give an elementary introduction to the holographic principle.