The hidden horizon and black hole unitarity

We motivate through a detailed analysis of the Hawking radiation in a Schwarzschild background a scheme in accordance with quantum unitarity. In this scheme the semi-classical approximation of the unitary quantum - horizonless - black hole S-matrix leads to the conventional description of the Hawking radiation from a classical black hole endowed with an event horizon. Unitarity is borne out by the detailed exclusive S-matrix amplitudes. There, the fixing of generic out-states, in addition to the in-state, yields in asymptotic Minkowski space-time saddle-point contributions which are dominated by Planckian metric fluctuations when approaching the Schwarzschild radius. We argue that these prevent the corresponding macroscopic "exclusive backgrounds" to develop an event horizon. However, if no out-state is selected, a distinct saddle-point geometry can be defined, in which Planckian fluctuations are tamed. Such "inclusive background" presents an event horizon and constitutes a coarse-grained average over the aforementioned exclusive ones. The classical event horizon appears as a coarse-grained structure, sustaining the thermodynamic significance of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. This is reminiscent of the tentative fuzzball description of extremal black holes: the role of microstates is played here by a complete set of out-states. Although the computations of unitary amplitudes would require a detailed theory of quantum gravity, the proposed scheme itself, which appeals to the metric description of gravity only in the vicinity of stationary points, does not.Comment: 29 pages, 4 figures. Typos corrected. Two footnotes added (footnotes 3 and 5

Rate Limitations of Unitary Event Analysis

Unitary event analysis is a new method for detecting episodes of synchronized neural activity (Riehle, Grüun, Diesmann, & Aertsen, 1997). It detects time intervals that contain coincident firing at higher rates than would be expected if the neurons fired as independent inhomogeneous Poisson processes; all coincidences in such intervals are called unitary events (UEs). Changes in the frequency of UEs that are correlated with behavioral states may indicate synchronization of neural firing that mediates or represents the behavioral state. We show that UE analysis is subject to severe limitations due to the underlying discrete statistics of the number of coincident events. These limitations are particularly stringent for low (0–10 spikes/s) firing rates. Under these conditions, the frequency of UEs is a random variable with a large variation relative to its mean. The relative variation decreases with increasing firing rate, and we compute the lowest firing rate, at which the 95% confidence interval around the mean frequency of UEs excludes zero. This random variation in UE frequency makes interpretation of changes in UEs problematic for neurons with low firing rates. As a typical example, when analyzing 150 trials of an experiment using an averaging window 100 ms wide and a 5ms coincidence window, firing rates should be greater than 7 spikes per second

Evolution in Quantum Causal Histories

We provide a precise definition and analysis of quantum causal histories (QCH). A QCH consists of a discrete, locally finite, causal pre-spacetime with matrix algebras encoding the quantum structure at each event. The evolution of quantum states and observables is described by completely positive maps between the algebras at causally related events. We show that this local description of evolution is sufficient and that unitary evolution can be recovered wherever it should actually be expected. This formalism may describe a quantum cosmology without an assumption of global hyperbolicity; it is thus more general than the Wheeler-DeWitt approach. The structure of a QCH is also closely related to quantum information theory and algebraic quantum field theory on a causal set.Comment: 20 pages. 8 figures. (v3: minor corrections, additional references [2,3]) to appear in CQ

A single-world consistent interpretation of quantum mechanics from fundamental time and length uncertainties

Within ordinary ---unitary--- quantum mechanics there exist global protocols that allow to verify that no definite event ---an outcome to which a probability can be associated--- occurs. Instead, states that start in a coherent superposition over possible outcomes always remain as a superposition. We show that, when taking into account fundamental errors in measuring length and time intervals, that have been put forward as a consequence of a conjunction of quantum mechanical and general relativity arguments, there are instances in which such global protocols no longer allow to distinguish whether the state is in a superposition or not. All predictions become identical as if one of the outcomes occurs, with probability determined by the state. We use this as a criteria to define events, as put forward in the Montevideo Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. We analyze in detail the occurrence of events in the paradigmatic case of a particle in a superposition of two different locations. We argue that our approach provides a consistent (C) single-world (S) picture of the universe, thus allowing an economical way out of the limitations imposed by a recent theorem by Frauchiger and Renner showing that having a self-consistent single-world description of the universe is incompatible with quantum theory. In fact, the main observation of this paper may be stated as follows: If quantum mechanics is extended to include gravitational effects to a QG theory, then QG, S, and C are satisfied.Comment: thoughts and comments more than welcom

Unitarity issue in BTZ black holes

We study the wave equation for a massive scalar in three-dimensional AdS-black hole spacetimes to understand the unitarity issues in a semiclassical way. Here we introduce four interesting spacetimes: the non-rotating BTZ black hole (NBTZ), pure AdS spacetime (PADS), massless BTZ black hole (MBTZ), and extremal BTZ black hole (EBTZ). Our method is based on the potential analysis and solving the wave equation to find the condition for the frequency $\omega$ exactly. In the NBTZ case, one finds the quasinormal (complex and discrete) modes which signals for a non-unitary evolution. Real and discrete modes are found for the PADS case, which means that it is unitary obviously. On the other hand, we find real and continuous modes for the two extremal black holes of MBTZ and EBTZ. It suggests that these could be candidates for the unitary system.Comment: 14 pages, contracted version to appear in MPL

Emergent geometry from stochastic dynamics, or Hawking evaporation in M(atrix) theory

We develop an microscopic model of the M-theory Schwarzschild black hole using the Banks-Fischler-Shenker-Susskind Matrix formulation of quantum gravity. The underlying dynamics is known to be chaotic, which allows us to use methods from Random Matrix Theory and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics to propose a coarse-grained bottom-up picture of the event horizon -- and the associated Hawking evaporation phenomenon. The analysis is possible due to a hierarchy between the various timescales at work. Event horizon physics is found to be non-local at the Planck scale, and we demonstrate how non-unitary physics and information loss arise from the process of averaging over the chaotic unitary dynamics. Most interestingly, we correlate the onset of non-unitarity with the emergence of spacetime geometry outside the horizon. We also write a mean field action for the evolution of qubits -- represented by polarization states of supergravity modes. This evolution is shown to have similarities to a recent toy model of black hole evaporation proposed by Osuga and Page -- a model aimed at developing a plausible no-firewall scenario.Comment: 37 pages, 3 figures; v2: clarifications added, typos correcte

Quantum Jump from Singularity to Outside of Black Hole

Considering the role of black hole singularity in quantum evolution, a resolution to the firewall paradox is presented. It is emphasized that if an observer has the singularity as a part of his spacetime, then the semi-classical evolution would be non-unitary as viewed by him. Specifically, a free-falling observer inside the black hole would have a Hilbert space with non-unitary evolution; a quantum jump for particles encountering the singularity to outside of the horizon as late Hawking radiations. The non-unitariness in the jump resembles the one in collapse of wave function, but preserves entanglements. Accordingly, we elaborate the first postulate of black hole complementarity: freely falling observers who pass through the event horizon would have non-unitary evolution, while it does not have physically measurable effects for them. Besides, no information would be lost in the singularity. Taking the modified picture into account, the firewall paradox can be resolved, respecting No Drama. A by-product of our modification is that roughly half of the entropy of the black hole is released close to the end of evaporation in the shape of very hot Hawking radiation.Comment: 7 figures, v2 more comprehensive, v3 matches the published versio