scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1182454
Biographies, obituaries, personalia, bibliographies (01A70) Applications of differential geometry to physics (53Z05) Quantum field theory on curved space or space-time backgrounds (81T20) Methods of quantum field theory in general relativity and gravitational theory (83C47) Black holes (83C57) String and superstring theories in gravitational theory (83E30)
The present paper is part of a volume intended for celebrating Roger Penrose's 65th birthday. Therefore, it is divided into two sections. In the first Section, the author lists the most important contributions to the development of general relativity, made by Penrose, during the 1960s. In the second Section, the author discusses the main topic of the paper: loss of information in black holes. His aim is to prove, using quantum field theory in curved space as well as the quantum mechanical formulation of general relativity, that this loss is a physical fact and cannot be recovered. The author starts this section by introducing the causes of the process of information loss in black holes, which are: the no-hair theorem and the cosmic censorship conjecture (CCC). Another important contribution for this problem was the discovery that black holes radiate with a thermal spectrum when quantum field theory in curved space effects are considered. This is the case because black holes can radiate down to zero mass, and disappear taking with them all information contained inside their event horizons. The only way to recover that information that has not been ruled out, in the author's opinion, is if there are correlations in the outgoing radiation that carry the information. Next, using general relativity as the right theory to study gravity down to the Planck scale, he shows that the loss of information in black holes cannot be recovered. First he considers quantum field theory in curved space. In order to support his claim, he examines the case where an external observer throws a certain number of particles, in a pure quantum state, inside an extreme magnetically charged black hole. The black hole is no longer extreme therefore, it will radiate thermally until it gets back to the extremal state. The net effect for the observer is that the information about the particles thrown inside the black hole has been lost. In particular, since the curvature outside the horizon has been small at all times, the quantum field theory in curved space conclusion that the radiation is in a mixed state, with no correlations between different modes, must be valid. At the quantum mechanical level, he considers the absorption of particles in pure quantum states, and posterior emission of other particles in mixed quantum states, by pairs of virtual black holes that may appear and disappear in the vacuum state. In order to describe a pair of virtual black holes, the author uses Euclidean metrics that are asymptotic to flat space at infinity, on the manifold \(S^2\times S^2\) minus a point. He also demands that among the Euclidean metrics only those which can be analytically continued to a real Lorentzian metric should be considered. The last request is due to the fact that indeed he does not compute the path integral representing the scattering amplitude. What he does instead, is pointing out some qualitative features of the scattering, in the above metrics, that indicate that quantum coherence is lost. The Lorentzian section of the above Euclidean metrics contains a pair of black holes that accelerate to infinity. The way by which the author derives the relevant qualitative features of the scattering is by doing quantum field theory in curved space, on the background of accelerating black hole metrics. After studying the Penrose diagram of accelerating black hole metrics, the author concludes that the Cauchy surface in the future is formed by \({\mathcal{I}}^+\) (future null infinity) and the future parts of the black hole horizons. Therefore, the quantum state of a field \(\phi\) is determined by the data on these surfaces. Finally, using the above result the author demonstrates his proposition in the following way. When one tries to write down the analog (in the present situation) of the Hartle-Hawking vacuum state, in the Hilbert space of the above Cauchy surface, it will no longer be a vacuum state. Rather, it will be a state containing pairs of particles. For events where one member of each pair goes out to \({\mathcal{I}}^+\) and the other falls into the hole, an observer on \({\mathcal{I}}^+\) cannot measure the parts of the quantum states on the black hole horizon. He would therefore have to trace out over all possibilities on the future black hole horizons and describe the observations by a density matrix. Thus there will be loss of quantum coherence. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0890.00046].
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