Quantum Black Holes in the Sky?

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 counterfactual classical features. Within the semi-classical theory we investigate the possibility that black hole radiation still does not allow for a finite time crossing of the Schwarzschild radius of collapsing matter as seen by distant observers. The exact form of the pre-Hawking radiation is not yet settled, and we make only minimal assumptions about its nature.

Kento Osuga and I give an explicit toy qubit transport model for transferring information from the gravitational field of a black hole to the Hawking radiation by a continuous unitary transformation of the outgoing radiation and the black hole gravitational field.  The model has no firewalls or other drama at the event horizon and fits the set of six physical constraints that Giddings has proposed for models of black hole evaporation.  It does utilize nonlocal qubits for the gravitational field but assumes that the radiation interacts locally with these nonlocal qubits, so in some sense the nonlocality is confined to the gravitational sector.  Although the qubit model is too crude to be quantitively correct for the detailed spectrum of Hawking radiation, it fits qualitatively with what is expected.

We propose that a large Schwarzschild black hole (BH) is a bound state of highly excited, long, closed strings just above the Hagedorn temperature. The effective free-energy density is expressed as a function of its entropy density and contains only linear and quadratic terms, in analogy with that of collapsed living polymers. Classically, the horizon of such BH’s is completely opaque, hiding any clues about the state and very existence of its interior. Quantum mechanically and in equilibrium, the situation is not much different: Hawking radiation will now be emitted, but it carries a minimal amount of information. The situation is significantly different when such a quantum BH is out of equilibrium. The BH can then emit ``supersized" Hawking radiation with a much larger amplitude than that emitted in equilibrium. The result is a new type of quantum hair that can reveal the state and composition of the BH interior to an external observer.