Typical Event Horizons in AdS/CFT

We consider the construction of local bulk operators in a black hole background dual to a pure state in conformal field theory. The properties of these operators in a microcanonical ensemble are studied. It has been argued in the literature that typical states in such an ensemble contain firewalls, or otherwise singular horizons. We argue this conclusion can be avoided with a proper definition of the interior operators.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1310.799

Firewalls in AdS/CFT

Several recent papers argue against firewalls by relaxing the requirement for locality outside the stretched horizon. In the firewall argument, locality essentially serves the purpose of ensuring that the degrees of freedom required for infall are those in the proximity of the black hole and not the ones in the early radiation. We make the firewall argument sharper by utilizing the AdS/CFT framework and claim that the firewall argument essentially states that the dual to a thermal state in the CFT is a firewall.Comment: 11 pages plus references, 8 figures; version accepted for publication in JHE

Soft Black Hole Absorption Rates as Conservation Laws

The absorption rate of low-energy, or soft, electromagnetic radiation by spherically symmetric black holes in arbitrary dimensions is shown to be fixed by conservation of energy and large gauge transformations. We interpret this result as the explicit realization of the Hawking-Perry-Strominger Ward identity for large gauge transformations in the background of a non-evaporating black hole. Along the way we rederive and extend previous analytic results regarding the absorption rate for the minimal scalar and the photon.Comment: 20 Pages, 1 figur