Black Hole Information Problem and Quantum Gravity

A coarse-grained description for the formation and evaporation of a black hole is given within the framework of a unitary theory of quantum gravity preserving locality, without dropping the information that manifests as macroscopic properties of the state at late times. The resulting picture depends strongly on the reference frame one chooses to describe the process. In one description based on a reference frame in which the reference point stays outside the black hole horizon for sufficiently long time, a late black hole state becomes a superposition of black holes in different locations and with different spins, even if the back hole is formed from collapsing matter that had a well-defined classical configuration with no angular momentum. The information about the initial state is partly encoded in relative coefficients---especially phases---of the terms representing macroscopically different geometries. In another description in which the reference point enters into the black hole horizon at late times, an S-matrix description in the asymptotically Minkowski spacetime is not applicable, but it sill allows for an "S-matrix" description in the full quantum gravitational Hilbert space including singularity states. Relations between different descriptions are given by unitary transformations acting on the full Hilbert space, and they in general involve superpositions of "distant" and "infalling" descriptions. Despite the intrinsically quantum mechanical nature of the black hole state, measurements performed by a classical physical observer are consistent with those implied by general relativity. In particular, the recently-considered firewall phenomenon can occur only for an exponentially fine-tuned (and intrinsically quantum mechanical) initial state, analogous to an entropy decreasing process in a system with large degrees of freedom.

Journal of the Korean Physical Society, 2013

It is suggested that the Einstein equation can be derived from Landauer's principle applied to an information erasing process at a local Rindler horizon and Jacobson's idea linking the Einstein equation with thermodynamics. When matter crosses the horizon, the information of the matter disappears and the horizon entanglement entropy increases to compensate the entropy reduction. The Einstein equation describes an information-energy relation during this process, which implies that entropic gravity is related to the quantum entanglement of the vacuum and has a quantum information theoretic origin.

Modern Physics Letters A

We portray the structure of quantum gravity emerging from recent progress in understanding the quantum mechanics of an evaporating black hole. Quantum gravity admits two different descriptions, based on Euclidean gravitational path integral and a unitarily evolving holographic quantum system, which appear to present vastly different pictures under the existence of a black hole. Nevertheless, these two descriptions are physically equivalent. Various issues of black hole physics — including the existence of the interior, unitarity of the evolution, the puzzle of too large interior volume, and the ensemble nature seen in certain calculations — are addressed very differently in the two descriptions, still leading to the same physical conclusions. The perspective of quantum gravity developed here is expected to have broader implications beyond black hole physics, especially for the cosmology of the eternally inflating multiverse.

International Journal of Modern Physics A, 2002

We describe some specific quantum black hole model. It is pointed out that the origin of a black hole entropy is the very process of quantum gravitational collapse. The quantum black hole mass spectrum is extracted from the mass spectrum of the gravitating source. The classical analog of quantum black hole is constructed.

arXiv (Cornell University), 2022

Since Hawking's 1974 discovery, we expect that a black hole formed by collapse will emit radiation and eventually disappear. Closely related to the information loss puzzle is the challenge to define an objective notion of physical entropy which increases throughout this process in a way consistent with unitarity. In recent years, this has been addressed with certain notions of coarse grained entropy. We have suggested instead that physical entropy should be identified with matter-gravity entanglement entropy and that this may offer an explanation of entropy increase both for the black hole collapse and evaporation system and also for other closed unitarily evolving systems, notably the universe as a whole. For this to work, it would have to be that the matter-gravity entanglement entropy of the late-time state of black hole evaporation is larger than the entropy of the freshly formed black hole. We argue here that this is possibly the case due to (usually neglected) photon-graviton interactions. If black hole evaporation is slowed down by putting the black hole in a slightly permeable box, we give plausibility arguments that the radiation remaining after a large black hole has evaporated will (be pure and) mainly consist of roughly equal numbers of photons and gravitons entangled with one another-with a photon-graviton entanglement entropy possibly greater than the entropy of the freshly formed black hole. It also seems possible that, even in the absence of such a box, the matter-gravity entanglement entropy might still increase and the late-time state again be a pure state of (predominantly) photons highly entangled with soft gravitons that the Hawking-emitted photons themselves had radiated. More work is needed to find out if it is indeed so.

2013

Abstract: A quantum entropy space is suggested as the fundamental arena describing the quantum effects. In the quantum regime the entropy is expressed as the superposition of many different Boltzmann entropies that span the space of the entropies before any measure. When a measure is performed the quantum entropy collapses to one component. A suggestive reading of the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics and of Bohm’s quantum potential in terms of the quantum entropy are provided. The space associated with the quantum entropy determines a distortion in the classical space of position, which appears as a Weyl-like gauge potential connected with Fisher information. This Weyl-like gauge potential produces a deformation of the moments which changes the classical action in such a way that Bohm’s quantum potential emerges as consequence of the non classical definition of entropy, in a non-Euclidean information space under the constraint of a minimum condition of Fisher information (Fisher Bohm- entropy). Finally, the possible quantum relativistic extensions of the theory and the connections with the problem of quantum gravity are investigated. The non classical thermodynamic approach to quantum phenomena changes the geometry of the particle phase space. In the light of the representation of gravity in ordinary phase space by torsion in the flat space (Teleparallel gravity), the change of geometry in the phase space introduces quantum phenomena in a natural way. This gives a new force to F. Shojai’s and A. Shojai’s theory where the geometry of space-time is highly coupled with a quantum potential whose origin is not the Schrödinger equation but the non classical entropy of a system of many particles that together change the geometry of the phase space of the positions (entanglement). In this way the non classical thermodynamic changes the classical geodetic as a consequence of the quantum phenomena and quantum and gravity are unified. Quantum affects geometry of multidimensional phase space and gravity changes in any point the torsion in the ordinary four-dimensional Lorenz space-time metric

arXiv (Cornell University), 2023

Hawking showed that a black hole formed by collapse will emit radiation and eventually disappear. We address the challenge to define an objective notion of physical entropy which increases throughout this process in a way consistent with unitarity. We have suggested that (instead of coarse-grained entropy) physical entropy is matter-gravity entanglement entropy and that this may offer an explanation of entropy increase both for the black hole collapse and evaporation system and also for other closed unitarily evolving systems. For this to work, the matter-gravity entanglement entropy of the late-time state of black hole evaporation would have to be larger than the entropy of the freshly formed black hole. We argue that this may possibly be the case due to (usually neglected) photon-graviton interactions.

2019

There ought to exist a reformulation of quantum theory which does not depend on classical time. To achieve such a reformulation, we introduce the concept of an atom of space-time-matter (STM). An STM atom is a classical non-commutative geometry, based on an asymmetric metric, and sourced by a closed string. Different such atoms interact via entanglement. The statistical thermodynamics of a large number of such atoms gives rise, at equilibrium, to a theory of quantum gravity. Far from equilibrium, where statistical fluctuations are large, the emergent theory reduces to classical general relativity. In this theory, classical black holes are far-from-equilibrium low entropy states, and their Hawking evaporation represents an attempt to return to the (maximum entropy) equilibrium quantum gravitational state.

Journal of High Energy Physics

We present a coherent picture of the quantum mechanics of black holes. The picture does not require the introduction of any drastically new physical effect beyond what is already known; it arises mostly from synthesizing and (re)interpreting existing results in appropriate manners. We identify the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy as the entropy associated with coarse-graining performed to obtain semiclassical field theory from a fundamental microscopic theory of quantum gravity. This clarifies the issues around the unitary evolution, the existence of the interior spacetime, and the thermodynamic nature in black hole physics-any result in semiclassical field theory is a statement about the maximally mixed ensemble of microscopic quantum states consistent with the specified background, within the precision allowed by quantum mechanics. We present a detailed analysis of information transfer in Hawking emission and black hole mining processes, clarifying what aspects of the underlying dynamics are (not) visible in semiclassical field theory. We also discuss relations between the black hole entropy and the entanglement entropy across the horizon. We then extend our discussions to more general contexts in quantum gravity. The subjects include extensions to de Sitter and Minkowski spaces and implications for complementarity and cosmology, especially the eternally inflating multiverse.

On Recent Developments in Theoretical and Experimental General Relativity, Gravitation and Relativistic Field Theories (In 3 Volumes), 2002