Hiding Information in Theories Beyond Quantum Mechanics,and It’s Application to the Black Hole Information Problem

The black hole information problem provides important clues for trying to piece together a quantum theory of gravity. Discussions on this topic have generally assumed that in a consistent theory of gravity and quantum mechanics, quantum theory is unmodified. In this review, we discuss the black hole information problem in the context of generalisations of quantum theory. In this preliminary exploration, we examine black holes in the setting of generalised probabilistic theories, in which quantum theory and classical probability theory are special cases. We are able to calculate the time it takes information to escape a black hole, assuming that information is preserved. In quantum mechanics, information should escape pure state black holes after half the Hawking photons have been emitted, but we find that this get’s modified in generalisations of quantum mechanics. Likewise the black-hole mirror result of Hayden and Preskill, that information from entangled black holes can escape quickly, also get’s modified. We find that although information exits the black hole as predicted by quantum theory, it is fairly generic that it fails to appear outside the black hole at this point—something impossible in quantum theory due to the no-hiding theorem. The information is neither inside the black hole, nor outside it, but is delocalised.     

Entropy is conserved in Hawking radiation as tunneling: A revisit of the black hole information loss paradox

We revisit in detail the paradox of black hole information loss due to Hawking radiation as tunneling. We compute the amount of information encoded in correlations among Hawking radiations for a variety of black holes, including the Schwarzchild black hole, the Reissner–Nordström black hole, the Kerr black hole, and the Kerr–Newman black hole. The special case of tunneling through a quantum horizon is also considered. Within a phenomenological treatment based on the accepted emission probability spectrum from a black hole, we find that information is leaked out hidden in the correlations of Hawking radiation. The recovery of this previously unaccounted for information helps to conserve the total entropy of a system composed of a black hole plus its radiations. We thus conclude, irrespective of the microscopic picture for black hole collapsing, the associated radiation process: Hawking radiation as tunneling, is consistent with unitarity as required by quantum mechanics.     

Black holes and quantum coherence

We attempt to gain some insight into the issue of whether pure states evolve to density matrices in the black hole evaporation process by examining the mode functions of the particles entering the black hole which are correlated with the particles which escape to infinity. We show that these particles enter the black hole singularity at relatively early times. This tends to support the view that pure states evolve to density matrices, i.e., that in this process quantum coherence is lost.     

Black holes and beyond

The black hole information paradox forces us into a strange situation: we must find a way to break the semiclassical approximation in a domain where no quantum gravity effects would normally be expected. Traditional quantizations of gravity do not exhibit any such breakdown, and this forces us into a difficult corner: either we must give up quantum mechanics or we must accept the existence of troublesome ‘remnants’. In string theory, however, the fundamental quanta are extended objects, and it turns out that the bound states of such objects acquire a size that grows with the number of quanta in the bound state. The interior of the black hole gets completely altered to a ‘fuzzball’ structure, and information is able to escape in radiation from the hole. The semiclassical approximation can break at macroscopic scales due to the large entropy of the hole: the measure in the path integral competes with the classical action, instead of giving a subleading correction. Putting this picture of black hole microstates together with ideas about entangled states leads to a natural set of conjectures on many long-standing questions in gravity: the significance of Rindler and de Sitter entropies, the notion of black hole complementarity, and the fate of an observer falling into a black hole.     

Information Erasure and the Generalized Second Law of Black Hole Thermodynamics

We consider the generalized second law of black hole thermodynamics in the light of quantum information theory, in particular information erasure and Landauer’s principle (namely, that erasure of information produces at least the equivalent amount of entropy). A small quantum system outside a black hole in the Hartle-Hawking state is studied, and the quantum system comes into thermal equilibrium with the radiation surrounding the black hole. For this scenario, we present a simple proof of the generalized second law based on quantum relative entropy. We then analyze the corresponding information erasure process, and confirm our proof of the generalized second law by applying Landauer’s principle.     

Information Conservation in a Noncommutative Quantum Black Hole Based on Canonical Typicality*

A method for calculating the radiation spectrum of an arbitrary black holes was recently proposed by Ma et al., [Europhys. Lett. 122 (2018) 30001] in which a non-thermal spectrum of a black hole can be obtained from its entropy using an approach based on canonical typicality. The non-thermal spectrum of a black hole enables a nonzero correlation between the black hole and its radiation, which can ensure that information is conserved during black hole evaporation. In this paper, by using the Kantowski-Sachs metric and Feynman-Hibbs procedure, the entropy of a noncommutative quantum black hole is calculated based on the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. Then, the radiation spectrum of the noncommutative quantum black hole is studied based on canonical typicality method. At last, the correlation between the radiation spectra is calculated. It is shown that the noncommutative effect increases the correlation among radiation and the information remains conserved for noncommutative quantum black holes.     

Spacetime topology change and black hole information

Topology change—the creation of a disconnected baby universe—due to black hole collapse may resolve the information loss paradox. Evolution from an early time Cauchy surface to a final surface which includes a slice of the disconnected region can be unitary and consistent with conventional quantum mechanics. We discuss the issue of cluster decomposition, showing that any violations thereof are likely to be unobservably small. Topology change is similar to the black hole remnant scenario and only requires assumptions about the behavior of quantum gravity in Planckian regimes. It does not require non-locality or any modification of low-energy physics.     

Universality of black hole quantum computing

By analyzing the key properties of black holes from the point of view of quantum information, we derive a model‐independent picture of black hole quantum computing. It has been noticed that this picture exhibits striking similarities with quantum critical condensates, allowing the use of a common language to describe quantum computing in both systems. We analyze such quantum computing by allowing coupling to external modes, under the condition that the external influence must be soft‐enough in order not to offset the basic properties of the system. We derive model‐independent bounds on some crucial time‐scales, such as the times of gate operation, decoherence, maximal entanglement and total scrambling. We show that for black hole type quantum computers all these time‐scales are of the order of the black hole half‐life time. Furthermore, we construct explicitly a set of Hamiltonians that generates a universal set of quantum gates for the black hole type computer. We find that the gates work at maximal energy efficiency. Furthermore, we establish a fundamental bound on the complexity of quantum circuits encoded on these systems, and characterize the unitary operations that are implementable. It becomes apparent that the computational power is very limited due to the fact that the black hole life‐time is of the same order of the gate operation time. As a consequence, it is impossible to retrieve its information, within the life‐time of a black hole, by externally coupling to the black hole qubits. However, we show that, in principle, coupling to some of the internal degrees of freedom allows acquiring knowledge about the micro‐state. Still, due to the trivial complexity of operations that can be performed, there is no time advantage over the collection of Hawking radiation and subsequent decoding.     

Entanglement in holographic dark energy models

We study a process of equilibration of holographic dark energy (HDE) with the cosmic horizon around the dark-energy dominated epoch. This process is characterized by a huge amount of information conveyed across the horizon, filling thereby a large gap in entropy between the system on the brink of experiencing a sudden collapse to a black hole and the black hole itself. At the same time, even in the absence of interaction between dark matter and dark energy, such a process marks a strong jump in the entanglement entropy, measuring the quantum-mechanical correlations between the horizon and its interior. Although the effective quantum field theory (QFT) with a peculiar relationship between the UV and IR cutoffs, a framework underlying all HDE models, may formally account for such a huge shift in the number of distinct quantum states, we show that the scope of such a framework becomes tremendously restricted, devoid virtually any application in other cosmological epochs or particle-physics phenomena. The problem of negative entropies for the non-phantom stuff is also discussed.     

A black hole with quantum core

A model black hole, holding a ‘quantum core’ characterized by the Planck order matter density, is revisited here. Based on the quantum improved Newton’s potential drawn out of the loop quantum cosmology we propose a Schwarzschild class, quantum improved black hole line-element that upholds the existence of Planck-dense quantum matter core. Causality is kept preserved in this proposal. Quite in a natural way the quantum core emerges closely homogeneous in its interior matter distribution. The radius of the quantum core turns out to be necessarily proportional to one-third power of the black hole mass. Hawking process of black hole evaporation leads to a shrinking quantum core, and as the mass of black hole approaches near about the Planck mass, the rate of evaporation diminishes rapidly and eventually leaves a cold remnant having a Planck order mass. Proposed model supports the standard quantum geometrical logarithmic correction to black hole entropy-area law.     

Hawking Radiation of a d-Dimensional Black Hole with Quantum Correction

We study the absorption probability and Hawking radiation of the scalar field in a d-dimensional black hole with quantum correction arising from the polymer quantization. We find that the quantum length scale k (i.e., the bounce radius) modifies the standard results in greybody factors and Hawking radiation on the brane and into the bulk. For the black hole with the larger mass M the effects of the parameter k in the four-dimensional black hole spacetime are entirely different from those in the high dimensional cases. When the mass of black hole M becomes very small, we also find that only the sign of the change rate of the greybody factors on the brane with respect to the dimensional number depends sharply on the bounce radius k. These information can help us know more about the extra dimension and the black holes with quantum correction.     

黑洞与奇点

黑洞可以说是引力最极端的体现,其视界内是个连光也逃不出去的时空区域。近来黑洞在天 文观测方面取得令人惊讶的发展,这其中包括：黑洞碰撞的引力波探测以及M87 星系的超大质量 黑洞的所谓第一张黑洞照片。但是在理论的层面上,黑洞物理尚有许多未解之谜。其中,信息遗失 的悖论是最有名的。但是,有另一个问题至少和信息的丢失一样{甚至更加{令人费解的,就是黑洞 内部的奇点性质。时空奇点是广义相对论本身无法描述的,在那里究竟发生什么事？黑洞内部的奇 点和宇宙大爆炸时的奇点有何不同？奇点是否会裸露在黑洞外面？所谓“宇宙监督猜想”的假设目 前有何进展？我们在这篇半科普的文章中简单的介绍这些课题,希望本文章对物理和数学的本科生 有所帮助。     

Stationary solutions of the Dirac equation in the gravitational field of a charged black hole

A stationary solution of the Dirac equation in the metric of a Reissner-Nordström black hole has been found. Only one stationary regular state outside the black hole event horizon and only one stationary regular state below the Cauchy horizon are shown to exist. The normalization integral of the wave functions diverges on both horizons if the black hole is non-extremal. This means that the solution found can be only the asymptotic limit of a nonstationary solution. In contrast, in the case of an extremal black hole, the normalization integral is finite and the stationary regular solution is physically self-consistent. The existence of quantum levels below the Cauchy horizon can affect the final stage of Hawking black hole evaporation and opens up the fundamental possibility of investigating the internal structure of black holes using quantum tunneling between external and internal states.     

Black hole evaporation in a noncommutative charged Vaidya model

We study the black hole evaporation and Hawking radiation for a noncommutative charged Vaidya black hole. For this purpose, we determine a spherically symmetric charged Vaidya model and then formulate a noncommutative Reissner-Nordstr?m-like solution of this model, which leads to an exact (t ? r)-dependent metric. The behavior of the temporal component of this metric and the corresponding Hawking temperature are investigated. The results are shown in the form of graphs. Further, we examine the tunneling process of charged massive particles through the quantum horizon. We find that the tunneling amplitude is modified due to noncommutativity. Also, it turns out that the black hole evaporates completely in the limits of large time and horizon radius. The effect of charge is to reduce the temperature from a maximum value to zero. We note that the final stage of black hole evaporation is a naked singularity.     

Information loss and entropy conservation in quantum corrected Hawking radiation

It was found in [B. Zhang, Q.y. Cai, L. You, M.S. Zhan, Phys. Lett. B 675 (2009) 98] that information is conserved in the process of black hole evaporation, by using the tunneling formulism and considering the correlations between emitted particles. In this Letter, we shall include quantum gravity effects, by taking into account of the log-area correction to Bekenstein–Hawking entropy. The correlation between successively emitted particles is calculated, with Planck-scale corrections. By considering the black hole evaporation process, entropy conservation is checked, and the existence of black hole remnant is emphasized. We conclude in this case information can leak out through the radiation and black hole evaporation is still a unitary process.     

Time dependent Schrödinger equation for black hole evaporation: No information loss

In 1976 S. Hawking claimed that “Because part of the information about the state of the system is lost down the hole, the final situation is represented by a density matrix rather than a pure quantum state”. ¹ This was the starting point of the popular “black hole (BH) information paradox”.     

What have we learned from two-dimensional models of quantum black holes?

The two-dimensional black hole provides a theoretical laboratory in which the quantum nature of black holes may be probed without the complications of four-dimensional dynamics. It is therefore natural to ask, what have we learned from this model? Much recent work has focused on the semi-classical limit where the black hole is similar to the Schwarzschild solution. However, in this essay, we demonstrate that theexact two-dimensional quantum black hole is non-singular. Instead the singularity is replaced by a surface of time reflection symmetry in an extended space-time. The maximally extended space-time thus consists of an infinite sequence of asymptotically flat regions connected by timelike wormholes, rather analogous to the Reissner-Nordström space-time. The implications of this to the apparent loss of quantum information arising from black hole evaporation are also briefly discussed.     

Essay: The Quantum Gravitational Black Hole Is Neither Black Nor White

Understanding the end state of black hole evaporation, the microscopic origin of black hole entropy, the information loss paradox, and the nature of the singularity arising in gravitational collapse - these are outstanding challenges for any candidate quantum theory of gravity. Recently, a midisuperspace model of quantum gravitational collapse has been solved using a lattice regularization scheme. It is shown that the mass of an eternal black hole follows the Bekenstein spectrum, and a related argument provides a fairly accurate estimate of the entropy. The solution also describes a quantized mass-energy distribution around a central black hole, which in the WKB approximation, is precisely Hawking radiation. The leading quantum gravitational correction makes the spectrum non-thermal, thus providing a plausible resolution of the information loss problem.     

Virtual Black Holes and Space–Time Structure

In the standard formalism of quantum gravity, black holes appear to form statistical distributions of quantum states. Now, however, we can present a theory that yields pure quantum states. It shows how particles entering a black hole can generate firewalls, which however can be removed, replacing them by the ‘footprints’ they produce in the out-going particles. This procedure can preserve the quantum information stored inside and around the black hole. We then focus on a subtle but unavoidable modification of the topology of the Schwarzschild metric: antipodal identification of points on the horizon. If it is true that vacuum fluctuations include virtual black holes, then the structure of space-time is radically different from what is usually thought.