2,368 research outputs found
Black Hole Evaporation without Information Loss
An approach to black hole quantization is proposed wherein it is assumed that
quantum coherence is preserved. A consequence of this is that the Penrose
diagram describing gravitational collapse will show the same topological
structure as flat Minkowski space. After giving our motivations for such a
quantization procedure we formulate the background field approximation, in
which particles are divided into "hard" particles and "soft" particles. The
background space-time metric depends both on the in-states and on the
out-states. We present some model calculations and extensive discussions. In
particular, we show, in the context of a toy model, that the -matrix
describing soft particles in the hard particle background of a collapsing star
is unitary, nevertheless, the spectrum of particles is shown to be
approximately thermal. We also conclude that there is an important topological
constraint on functional integrals.Comment: 35 pages (including Figures); TEX, 3 figures in postscrip
Light Sheets and the Covariant Entropy Conjecture
We examine the holography bound suggested by Bousso in his covariant entropy
conjecture, and argue that it is violated because his notion of light sheet is
too generous. We suggest its replacement by a weaker bound.Comment: 5 pages, to appear in Classical and Quantum Gravit
Hawking Radiation from Feynman Diagrams
The aim of this letter is to clarify the relationships between Hawking
radiation and the scattering of light by matter falling into a black hole. To
this end we analyze the S-matrix elements of a model composed of a massive
infalling particle (described by a quantized field) and the radiation field.
These fields are coupled by current-current interactions and propagate in the
Schwarzschild geometry. As long as the photons energy is much smaller than the
mass of the infalling particle, one recovers Hawking radiation since our
S-matrix elements identically reproduce the Bogoliubov coefficients obtained by
treating the trajectory of the infalling particle classically. But after a
brief period, the energy of the `partners' of Hawking photons reaches this mass
and the production of thermal photons through these interactions stops. The
implications of this result are discussed.Comment: 12 pages, revtex, no figure
Quantum Gravity as a Dissipative Deterministic System
It is argued that the so-called holographic principle will obstruct attempts
to produce physically realistic models for the unification of general
relativity with quantum mechanics, unless determinism in the latter is
restored. The notion of time in GR is so different from the usual one in
elementary particle physics that we believe that certain versions of hidden
variable theories can -- and must -- be revived. A completely natural procedure
is proposed, in which the dissipation of information plays an essential role.
Unlike earlier attempts, it allows us to use strictly continuous and
differentiable classical field theories as a starting point (although discrete
variables, leading to fermionic degrees of freedom, are also welcome), and we
show how an effective Hilbert space of quantum states naturally emerges when
one attempts to describe the solutions statistically. Our theory removes some
of the mysteries of the holographic principle; apparently non-local features
are to be expected when the quantum degrees of freedom of the world are
projected onto a lower-dimensional black hole horizon. Various examples and
models illustrate the points we wish to make, notably a model showing that
massless, non interacting neutrinos are deterministic.Comment: 20 pages plain TeX, 2 figures PostScript. Added some further
explanations, and the definitions of `beable' and `changeable'. A minor error
correcte
Quantum metric fluctuations and Hawking radiation
In this Letter we study the gravitational interactions between outgoing
configurations giving rise to Hawking radiation and in-falling configurations.
When the latter are in their ground state, the near horizon interactions lead
to collective effects which express themselves as metric fluctuations and which
induce dissipation, as in Brownian motion. This dissipation prevents the
appearance of trans-Planckian frequencies and leads to a description of Hawking
radiation which is very similar to that obtained from sound propagation in
condensed matter models.Comment: 4 pages, revte
b anti-b Higgs production at the LHC: Yukawa corrections and the leading Landau singularity
At tree-level Higgs production in association with a b-quark pair proceeds
through the small Yukawa bottom coupling in the Standard Model. Even in the
limit where this coupling vanishes, electroweak one-loop effects, through the
top-Higgs Yukawa coupling in particular, can still trigger this reaction. This
contribution is small for Higgs masses around 120GeV but it quickly picks up
for higher Higgs masses especially because the one-loop amplitude develops a
leading Landau singularity and new thresholds open up. These effects can be
viewed as the production of a pair of top quarks which rescatter to give rise
to Higgs production through WW fusion. We study the leading Landau singularity
in detail. Since this singularity is not integrable when the one-loop amplitude
is squared, we regulate the cross section by taking into account the width of
the internal top and W particles. This requires that we extend the usual box
one-loop function to the case of imaginary masses. We show how this can be
implemented analytically in our case. We study in some detail the cross section
at the LHC as a function of the Higgs mass and show how some distributions can
be drastically affected compared to the tree-level result.Comment: 48 pages, 20 figures. Phys.Rev.D accepted version. Conclusions
unchanged, minor changes and references adde
First Order Corrections to the Unruh Effect
First order corrections to the Unruh effect are calculated from a model of an
accelerated particle detector of finite mass. We show that quantum smearing of
the trajectory and large recoil essentially do not modify the Unruh effect.
Nevertheless, we find corrections to the thermal distribution and to the Unruh
temperature. In a certain limit, when the distribution at equilibrium remains
exactly thermal, the corrected temperature is found to be , where is the Unruh temperature. We estimate the consequent
corrections to the Hawking temperature and the black hole entropy, and comment
on the relationship to the problem of trans-planckian frequencies.Comment: 23 pages, LaTe
From Unruh temperature to generalized Bousso bound
In a classical spacetime satisfying Einstein's equation and the null
convergence condition, the same quantum mechanical effects that cause black
holes to have a temperature are found to imply, if joined to the macroscopic
nature of entropy, the covariant entropy bound in its generalized form. This is
obtained from thermodynamics, as applied across the local Rindler causal
horizon through every point p of the null hypersurfaces L the covariant entropy
bound refers to, in the direction of the null geodesics generating L.Comment: 5 pages. v2: some changes to clarify the path to the obtained
results; two (final) paragraphs, the acknowledgments and a reference adde
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