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Entropy
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The Black Hole Information Problem
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The Black Hole Information Problem

A special issue of Entropy (ISSN 1099-4300). This special issue belongs to the section "Astrophysics, Cosmology, and Black Holes".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 April 2024) | Viewed by 3002

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Stephen Hsu

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Guest Editor
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University, Michigan, MI 48823, USA
Interests: theoretical physics; quantum mechanics; particle physics; quantum field theory; cosmology; black holes
Prof. Dr. Xavier Calmet

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Sussex, Sussex BN1 4GE, UK
Interests: theoretical physics; quantum physics; quantum gravity; black holes; cosmology; quantum field theory
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Roberto Casadio

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Bologna, 40126 Bologna, Italy
Interests: quantum aspects of the gravitational interaction; gravitational collapse; black hole formation and evolution

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In 1976, Stephen Hawking argued, based on the nature of the black hole radiation which he discovered, that there is a fundamental conflict between gravity and quantum mechanics. He argued that black hole evaporation cannot be unitary; it causes a pure initial quantum state to evolve into a mixed state. For almost fifty years, physicists have attempted to resolve this problem.

Recently, it has been emphasized that the quantum state of the spacetime geometry (i.e., graviton field) external to the black hole horizon carries quantum information which is dependent on the internal state of the black hole. As a consequence, the No Hair Theorem describing black holes is violated by quantum effects (“quantum hair”). More generally, it has also been proposed (“information holography”) that all of the quantum information describing the bulk of spacetime can be recovered, in principle, through precise measurements of the graviton and matter fields at the asymptotic boundary of spacetime.

This Special Issue aims to be a forum for a discussion of black hole information, with emphasis on recent developments such as, but not limited to, those described above.

Contributions on the following topics are particularly welcome: quantum hair from black holes, information holography, influence on Hawking radiation mediated by quantum effects in the horizon region, encoding of quantum information in Hawking radiation, entropy of Hawking radiation, the role of macroscopic superposition states in the quantum evolution of black holes, the role of quantum foundations in understanding black hole information, and novel scenarios for remnants.

Prof. Dr. Stephen Hsu
Prof. Dr. Xavier Calmet
Dr. Roberto Casadio
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Entropy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • black holes
  • quantum information
  • unitarity
  • Hawking radiation
  • quantum foundations
  • decoherence
  • AdS/CFT duality
  • quantum gravity
  • quantum fields in curved space

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

10 pages, 331 KiB  
Article
Lagrangian Partition Functions Subject to a Fixed Spatial Volume Constraint in the Lovelock Theory
by Mengqi Lu and Robert B. Mann
Entropy 2024, 26(4), 291; https://doi.org/10.3390/e26040291 - 27 Mar 2024
Viewed by 485
Abstract
We evaluate here the quantum gravity partition function that counts the dimension of the Hilbert space of a simply connected spatial region of a fixed proper volume in the context of Lovelock gravity, generalizing the results for Einstein gravity. It is found that [...] Read more.
We evaluate here the quantum gravity partition function that counts the dimension of the Hilbert space of a simply connected spatial region of a fixed proper volume in the context of Lovelock gravity, generalizing the results for Einstein gravity. It is found that there are sphere saddle metrics for a partition function at a fixed spatial volume in Lovelock theory. Those stationary points take exactly the same forms as in Einstein gravity. The logarithm of Z corresponding to a zero effective cosmological constant indicates that the Bekenstein–Hawking entropy of the boundary area and that corresponding to a positive effective cosmological constant points to the Wald entropy of the boundary area. We also show the existence of zeroth-order phase transitions between different vacua, a phenomenon distinct from Einstein gravity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Black Hole Information Problem)
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15 pages, 752 KiB  
Article
Tunneling between Multiple Histories as a Solution to the Information Loss Paradox
by Pisin Chen, Misao Sasaki, Dong-han Yeom and Junggi Yoon
Entropy 2023, 25(12), 1663; https://doi.org/10.3390/e25121663 - 15 Dec 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 766
Abstract
The information loss paradox associated with black hole Hawking evaporation is an unresolved problem in modern theoretical physics. In a recent brief essay, we revisited the evolution of the black hole entanglement entropy via the Euclidean path integral (EPI) of the quantum state [...] Read more.
The information loss paradox associated with black hole Hawking evaporation is an unresolved problem in modern theoretical physics. In a recent brief essay, we revisited the evolution of the black hole entanglement entropy via the Euclidean path integral (EPI) of the quantum state and allow for the branching of semi-classical histories along the Lorentzian evolution. We posited that there exist at least two histories that contribute to EPI, where one is an information-losing history, while the other is an information-preserving one. At early times, the former dominates EPI, while at the late times, the latter becomes dominant. By doing so, we recovered the essence of the Page curve, and thus, the unitarity, albeit with the turning point, i.e., the Page time, much shifted toward the late time. In this full-length paper, we fill in the details of our arguments and calculations to strengthen our notion. One implication of this modified Page curve is that the entropy bound may thus be violated. We comment on the similarity and difference between our approach and that of the replica wormholes and the islands’ conjectures. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Black Hole Information Problem)
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24 pages, 1584 KiB  
Article
Discreteness Unravels the Black Hole Information Puzzle: Insights from a Quantum Gravity Toy Model
by Alejandro Perez and Sami Viollet
Entropy 2023, 25(11), 1479; https://doi.org/10.3390/e25111479 - 25 Oct 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1016
Abstract
The black hole information puzzle can be resolved if two conditions are met. The first is that the information about what falls inside a black hole remains encoded in degrees of freedom that persist after the black hole completely evaporates. These degrees of [...] Read more.
The black hole information puzzle can be resolved if two conditions are met. The first is that the information about what falls inside a black hole remains encoded in degrees of freedom that persist after the black hole completely evaporates. These degrees of freedom should be capable of purifying the information. The second is if these purifying degrees of freedom do not significantly contribute to the system’s energy, as the macroscopic mass of the initial black hole has been radiated away as Hawking radiation to infinity. The presence of microscopic degrees of freedom at the Planck scale provides a natural mechanism for achieving these two conditions without running into the problem of the large pair-creation probabilities of standard remnant scenarios. In the context of Hawking radiation, the first condition implies that correlations between the in and out Hawking partner particles need to be transferred to correlations between the microscopic degrees of freedom and the out partners in the radiation. This transfer occurs dynamically when the in partners reach the singularity inside the black hole, entering the UV regime of quantum gravity where the interaction with the microscopic degrees of freedom becomes strong. The second condition suggests that the conventional notion of the vacuum’s uniqueness in quantum field theory should fail when considering the full quantum gravity degrees of freedom. In this paper, we demonstrate both key aspects of this mechanism using a solvable toy model of a quantum black hole inspired by loop quantum gravity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Black Hole Information Problem)
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