Related papers: Black holes, string theory and quantum coherence
Unitarity is a pillar of quantum theory. Nevertheless, it is also a source of several of its conceptual problems. We note that in a world where measurements are relational, as is the case in gravitation, quantum mechanics exhibits a…
We point out that the recent conjecture relating large N gauge theories to string theory in anti-de Sitter spaces offers a resolution in principle of many problems in black hole physics. This is because the gauge theory also describes…
String theory provides numerous examples of duality between gravitational theories and unitary gauge theories. To resolve the black hole information paradox in this setting, it is necessary to better understand how unitarity is implemented…
String theory usually represents quantum black holes as systems whose statistical mechanics reproduces Hawking's thermodynamics in a very satisfactory way. Complicated brane theoretical models are worked out, as quantum versions of…
It is conventionally believed that if a ball of matter of mass $M$ has a radius close to $2GM$ then it must collapse to a black hole. But string theory microstates (fuzzballs) have no horizon or singularity, and they do {\it not} collapse.…
Dynamical black-hole scenarios have been developed in loop quantum gravity in various ways, combining results from mini and midisuperspace models. In the past, the underlying geometry of space-time has often been expressed in terms of line…
The black-hole information paradox provides a stringent test of would-be theories of quantum gravity. String theory has made significant progress toward a resolution of this paradox, and has led to the fuzzball and microstate geometry…
There has been spectacular progress in the development of string and superstring theories since its inception thirty years ago. Development in this area has never been impeded by the lack of experimental confirmation. Indeed, numerous bold…
String theory tells us that quantum gravity has a dual description as a field theory (without gravity). We use the field theory dual to ask what happens to an object as it falls into the simplest black hole: the 2-charge extremal hole. In…
The statistical mechanics of black holes arbitrarily far from extremality is modeled by a gas of weakly interacting strings. As an effective low energy description of black holes the model provides a number of highly non-trivial consistency…
We propose a description of how a large, cold black hole (black zero-brane) in type IIA superstring theory evaporates into freely propagating D0-branes, by solving the dual gauge theory quantitatively. The energy spectrum of emitted…
Pure states in quantum field theory can be represented by many-fingered block-time wave functions, which treat time on an equal footing with space and make the notions of "time evolution" and "state at a given time" fundamentally…
This is a write-up of introductory lectures on black holes in string theory given at TASI-99. Topics discussed include: Black holes, thermodynamics and the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy, the information problem; supergravity actions, conserved…
The dynamics of the gravitational collapse is examined in the realm of string based formalism of D-branes that encompass General Relativity as a low energy limit. A complete analytical solution is given to the spherically symmetric collapse…
Atoms and the planets acquire their stability from the quantum mechanical incompatibility of the position and momentum measurements. This incompatibility is expressed by the fundamental commutator [x, p_x]=i hbar, or equivalently, via the…
The black hole information paradox is a very poorly understood problem. It is often believed that Hawking's argument is not precisely formulated, and a more careful accounting of naturally occurring quantum corrections will allow the…
The modeling of black holes is an important desideratum for any quantum theory of gravity. Not only is a classical black hole metric sought, but also agreement with the laws of black hole thermodynamics. In this paper, we describe how these…
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…
One of important directions in superstring theory is to reveal the quantum nature of black hole. In this paper we embed Schwarzschild black hole into superstring theory or M-theory, which we call a smeared black hole, and resolve quantum…
When it comes to performing thought experiments with black holes, Einstein-Bohr like discussions have to be re-opened. For instance one can ask what happens to the quantum state of a black hole when the wave function of a single ingoing…