HEP/Astro Journal Club -- Friday, 28 September 2001

A proposal to resolve the black hole information paradox

Samir Mathur (OSU)

Abstract

The black hole information paradox has presented a difficulty for the unification of general relativity and quantum mechanics. Even though string theory has suggested very strongly that black hole evaporation is an information conserving process, the paradox has remained since we did not know what goes wrong with Hawking's original calculation of the radiation, which shows that information is lost. In this talk I will argue that resolving the paradox needs us to attribute spacelike hypersurfaces with not only a metric but also a `density of degrees of freedom'. I will then present evidence from a string theory calculation in support of this conjecture. We find that the maximum `stretch' of a region of volume V is V/2G; further stretching dilutes the degrees of freedom so much that semiclassical propagation breaks down.

References

S. D. Mathur, ``Resolving the black hole information paradox,'' Int.J.Mod.Phys. A15, 4877 (2000) [gr-qc/0007011].

O. Lunin and S. D. Mathur, ``AdS/CFT duality and the black hole information paradox,'' hep-th/0109154.

12:00, Smith Lab 4079