DOCSLIB.ORG

Fender12 BHB.Pdf

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Fender12 BHB.Pdf Stellar-Mass Black Holes and Ultraluminous X-ray Sources Rob Fender and Tomaso Belloni Science 337, 540 (2012); DOI: 10.1126/science.1221790 This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. If you wish to distribute this article to others, you can order high-quality copies for your colleagues, clients, or customers by clicking here. Permission to republish or repurpose articles or portions of articles can be obtained by following the guidelines here. The following resources related to this article are available online at www.sciencemag.org (this information is current as of March 28, 2013 ): Updated information and services, including high-resolution figures, can be found in the online on March 28, 2013 version of this article at: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6094/540.full.html Supporting Online Material can be found at: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2012/08/01/337.6094.540.DC1.html A list of selected additional articles on the Science Web sites related to this article can be found at: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6094/540.full.html#related This article cites 37 articles, 6 of which can be accessed free: www.sciencemag.org http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6094/540.full.html#ref-list-1 This article has been cited by 1 articles hosted by HighWire Press; see: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6094/540.full.html#related-urls This article appears in the following subject collections: Astronomy http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/collection/astronomy Downloaded from Science (print ISSN 0036-8075; online ISSN 1095-9203) is published weekly, except the last week in December, by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1200 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005. Copyright 2012 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science; all rights reserved. The title Science is a registered trademark of AAAS. Black Holes Einstein equations to describe the black hole, one dissipative behavior in model systems with a de- transition amplitude <f |H|i> is the complex conjugate can get striking insight about a quantum almost- gree of detail that is not usually possible. In a of the transition amplitude <i|H|f > in the opposite direction. ideal fluid (10). This has become an important sense, this brings our story full circle. The story 2. The precise time-reversal symmetry of nature also technique in modeling heavy ion collisions. began nearly 40 years ago with the initial insight includes reflection symmetry and charge conjugation. Condensed matter physics is described in prin- that the irreversibility of black hole physics is anal- 3. J. Bekenstein, Phys.Rev.DPart.Fields7, 2333 ciple by the Schrödinger equation of electrons and ogous to the irreversibility described by the sec- (1973). 4. S. W. Hawking, Nature 248, 30 (1974). nuclei, but for most systems, a full understanding ond law of thermodynamics. In general, to reconcile 5.K.S.Thorne,D.A.MacDonald,R.H.Price,Eds., based on the Schrödinger equation is way out of this irreversibility with the reversible nature of the Black Holes: The Membrane Paradigm (Yale Univ. reach. Nowadays, there is great interest in under- fundamental equations is tricky, and explicit cal- Press, New Haven, CT 1986). standing quantum critical behavior in quasi–two- culations are not easy to come by. The link be- 6. A. Strominger, C. Vafa, Phys. Lett. B 379, 99 (1996). dimensional systems such as high temperature tween ordinary physics and black hole physics that 7. S. S. Gubser, I. R. Klebanov, A. W. Peet, Phys. Rev. D Part. Fields 54, 3915 (1996). superconductors. These systems are studied by a is given by gauge-gravity duality has given physi- 8. J. M. Maldacena, Adv. Theor. Math. Phys. 2, 231 (1998). wide variety of methods, and no one approach is cists a powerful way to do precisely this. This gives 9. M. J. Duff, R. R. Khuri, J.-X. Lu, Phys. Rep. 259, 213 likely to be a panacea. Still, it has turned out to be us confidence that we are on the right track in (1995). very interesting to study two-dimensional quantum understanding quantum black holes, and it also 10. P. K. Kovtun, D. T. Son, A. O. Starinets, Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 111601 (2005). critical systems by mapping them to the horizon of exhibits the unity of physics in a most pleasing way. 11. S. Sachdev, Annu. Rev. Cond. Matt. Phys. 3, 9 (2012). a black hole (11). With this approach, one can per- form calculations that are usually out of reach. Acknowledgments: This research was supported in part References and Notes by NSF grant PHY-096944. Among other things, this method has been 1. The precise mathematical argument uses the fact that used to analyze the crossover from quantum to the Hamiltonian operator H is hermitian, so that the 10.1126/science.1221693 REVIEW both were moderately certain it was a black hole, Hawking wanted an insurance policy). In 1990, Hawking conceded the bet, accepting that the on March 28, 2013 Stellar-Mass Black Holes source contained a black hole. Since then, astron- omers have discovered many hundreds of x-ray and Ultraluminous X-ray Sources binaries within the Milky Way and beyond, several tens of which are good candidate BHXRBs (4). Rob Fender1* and Tomaso Belloni2 Over the past decade, repeating empirical pat- terns connecting the x-ray, radio, and infrared emis- We review the likely population, observational properties, and broad implications of stellar-mass sion from these objects have been found and used black holes and ultraluminous x-ray sources. We focus on the clear empirical rules connecting to connect these observations to physical compo- accretion and outflow that have been established for stellar-mass black holes in binary systems in nents of the accretion flow (Fig. 1). It is likely that www.sciencemag.org the past decade and a half. These patterns of behavior are probably the keys that will allow us some of these empirical patterns of behavior also 5 9 to understand black hole feedback on the largest scales over cosmological time scales. apply to accreting supermassive (10 to 10 M⊙) black holes in the centers of some galaxies, and tellar-mass black holes are the end points galaxy, under the assumption that all stars of ini- that from studying BHXRBs on humanly accessi- of the evolution of the most massive stars. tial mass >10 times that of the Sun met this fate. ble time scales, we may be learning about the forces SThecollapseofanironcoreof>3solar The strongest evidence for the existence of this that shaped the growth of galaxies over the life- masses (M⊙) cannot be stopped by either electron population of stellar-mass black holes comes from time of the universe. Between the stellar-mass black or neutron degeneracy pressure (which would other- observations of x-ray binary systems (XRBs). In holes and the supermassive, there could be a popu- Downloaded from wise result in a white dwarf, or neutron star, respec- XRBs, matter is accreted (gravitationally captured lation of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs), 2 5 tively). Within the framework of classical general into/onto the accretor), releasing large amounts of with masses in the range of 10 to 10 M⊙.These relativity (GR), the core collapses to a singularity gravitational potential energy in the process. The may be related to the ultra-luminous x-ray sources that is cloaked in an event horizon before it can be efficiency of this process in releasing the gravita- (ULXs), very luminous x-ray sources that have been viewed. Like a giant elementary particle, the result- tional potential energy is determined by the ratio observed in external galaxies. However, the problem ing black hole is then entirely described by three of mass to radius of the accretor. For neutron of the nature of these sources is still unsettled, and parameters: mass, spin, and charge (1). Because stars, more than 10% of the rest mass energy can alternative options involving stellar-mass black galaxies are old—the Milky Way is at least 13 bil- be released—a process more efficient at energy re- holes are still open. lion years old—and the most massive stars evolve lease than nuclear fusion. For black holes, the ef- quickly (within millions of years or less), there ficiency can be even higher (3),butthepresenceof Black Hole X-ray Binaries are likely to be a large number of such stellar-mass an event horizon—from within which no signals can There are several different approaches to clas- black holes in our galaxy alone. Shapiro and ever be observed in the outside universe—means sifying BHXRBs and their behavior, each of Teukolsky (2) calculated that there were likely to that this accretion power may be lost. which can lead to different physical insights. One be as many as 108 stellar-mass black holes in our In some of these systems, dynamical mea- important approach is to look at the orbital pa- surements of the orbit indicate massive (>3 M⊙) rameters, and the most important of these is the accretors that, independently, show no evidence mass of the donor star because it relates to the 1 Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, Southampton for any emission from a solid surface. The first age of the binary. High-mass x-ray binaries have SO17 1BJ, UK. 2Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica–Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, Via Emilio Bianchi 46, I-23807 Merate such candidate black hole x-ray binary (BHXRB) OB-type (5) massive donors and are young sys- (LC), Italy. system detected was Cygnus X-1, which led to a tems, typically with ages less than a million years *To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Conceptual Model for the Origin of the Cutoff Parameter in Exotic Compact Objects
    S S symmetry Article A Conceptual Model for the Origin of the Cutoff Parameter in Exotic Compact Objects Wilson Alexander Rojas Castillo 1 and Jose Robel Arenas Salazar 2,* 1 Departamento de Física, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá UN.11001, Colombia; warojasc@unal.edu.co 2 Observatorio Astronómico Nacional, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá UN.11001, Colombia * Correspondence: jrarenass@unal.edu.co Received: 30 October 2020; Accepted: 30 November 2020 ; Published: 14 December 2020 Abstract: A Black Hole (BH) is a spacetime region with a horizon and where geodesics converge to a singularity. At such a point, the gravitational field equations fail. As an alternative to the problem of the singularity arises the existence of Exotic Compact Objects (ECOs) that prevent the problem of the singularity through a transition phase of matter once it has crossed the horizon. ECOs are characterized by a closeness parameter or cutoff, e, which measures the degree of compactness of the object. This parameter is established as the difference between the radius of the ECO’s surface and the gravitational radius. Thus, different values of e correspond to different types of ECOs. If e is very big, the ECO behaves more like a star than a black hole. On the contrary, if e tends to a very small value, the ECO behaves like a black hole. It is considered a conceptual model of the origin of the cutoff for ECOs, when a dust shell contracts gravitationally from an initial position to near the Schwarzschild radius. This allowed us to find that the cutoff makes two types of contributions: a classical one governed by General Relativity and one of a quantum nature, if the ECO is very close to the horizon, when estimating that the maximum entropy is contained within the material that composes the shell.
    [Show full text]
  • Effective Conformal Descriptions of Black Hole Entropy
    Entropy 2011, 13, 1355-1379; doi:10.3390/e13071355 OPEN ACCESS entropy ISSN 1099-4300 www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy Article Effective Conformal Descriptions of Black Hole Entropy Steven Carlip Department of Physics, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA; E-Mail: carlip@physics.ucdavis.edu. Received: 1 July 2011; in revised form: 12 July 2011 / Accepted: 19 July 2011 / Published: 20 July 2011 Abstract: It is no longer considered surprising that black holes have temperatures and entropies. What remains surprising, though, is the universality of these thermodynamic properties: their exceptionally simple and general form, and the fact that they can be derived from many very different descriptions of the underlying microscopic degrees of freedom. I review the proposal that this universality arises from an approximate conformal symmetry, which permits an effective “conformal dual” description that is largely independent of the microscopic details. Keywords: black holes; Bekenstein–Hawking entropy; conformal dual 1. Introduction Since the seminal work of Bekenstein [1] and Hawking [2], we have understood that black holes behave as thermodynamic systems, with characteristic temperatures and entropies. A central task for quantum gravity is finding a statistical mechanical description of this behavior in terms of microscopic states. One important clue may come from the surprising “universality” of these thermodynamic properties, which manifests itself in two ways: – The Bekenstein–Hawking entropy A S = (1) 4G takes the same simple form for all black holes, independent of the charges, spin, and even the number of spacetime dimensions. If the action differs from that of general relativity, the entropy is modified, but again in a simple and universal way [3].
    [Show full text]
  • Membrane Horizons: the Black Hole's New Clothes
    MEMBRANE HORIZONS: THE BLACK HOLE’S NEW CLOTHES Maulik Kirit Parikh A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE arXiv:hep-th/9907002v1 1 Jul 1999 OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY RECOMMENDED FOR ACCEPTANCE BY THE DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS October 1998 Abstract This thesis addresses some classical and semi-classical aspects of black holes, using an effective membrane representation of the event horizon. This “membrane paradigm” is the remarkable view that, to an external observer, a black hole appears to behave exactly like a dynamical fluid membrane, obeying such pre-relativistic equations as Ohm’s law and the Navier-Stokes equation. It has traditionally been derived by manipulating the equations of motion. Here, however, the equations are derived from an underlying action formulation which has the advantage of clarifying the paradigm and simplifying the derivations, in addition to providing a bridge to thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. Within this framework, previous mem- brane results are derived and extended to dyonic black hole solutions. It is explained how an action can produce dissipative equations. The classical portion of the study ends with a demonstration of the validity of a minimum entropy production principle for black holes. Turning next to semi-classical theory, it is shown that familiar thermodynamic properties of black holes also emerge from the membrane action, via a Euclidean path integral. In particular, the membrane action can account for the hole’s Bekenstein- Hawking entropy, including the numerical factor. Two short and direct derivations of Hawking radiation as an instanton process are then presented. The first is a tunneling calculation based on particles in a dynamical geometry, closely analogous to Schwinger pair production in an electric field.
    [Show full text]
  • Energy Extraction from Boosted Black Holes: Penrose Process, Jets, and the Membrane at Infinity
    Energy extraction from boosted black holes: Penrose process, jets, and the membrane at infinity The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Citation Penna, Robert F. "Energy extraction from boosted black holes: Penrose process, jets, and the membrane at infinity." Phys. Rev. D 91, 084044 (April 2015). © 2015 American Physical Society As Published http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.91.084044 Publisher American Physical Society Version Final published version Citable link http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/96722 Terms of Use Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. PHYSICAL REVIEW D 91, 084044 (2015) Energy extraction from boosted black holes: Penrose process, jets, and the membrane at infinity Robert F. Penna* Department of Physics and Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA (Received 12 March 2015; published 20 April 2015) Numerical simulations indicate that black holes carrying linear momentum and/or orbital momentum can power jets. The jets extract the kinetic energy stored in the black hole’s motion. This could provide an important electromagnetic counterpart to gravitational wave searches. We develop the theory underlying these jets. In particular, we derive the analogues of the Penrose process and the Blandford-Znajek jet power prediction for boosted black holes. The jet power we find is ðv=2MÞ2Φ2=ð4πÞ, where v is the hole’s velocity, M is its mass, and Φ is the magnetic flux.
    [Show full text]
  • Black Holes and Black Hole Thermodynamics Without Event Horizons
    General Relativity and Gravitation (2011) DOI 10.1007/s10714-008-0739-9 RESEARCHARTICLE Alex B. Nielsen Black holes and black hole thermodynamics without event horizons Received: 18 June 2008 / Accepted: 22 November 2008 c Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009 Abstract We investigate whether black holes can be defined without using event horizons. In particular we focus on the thermodynamic properties of event hori- zons and the alternative, locally defined horizons. We discuss the assumptions and limitations of the proofs of the zeroth, first and second laws of black hole mechan- ics for both event horizons and trapping horizons. This leads to the possibility that black holes may be more usefully defined in terms of trapping horizons. We also review how Hawking radiation may be seen to arise from trapping horizons and discuss which horizon area should be associated with the gravitational entropy. Keywords Black holes, Black hole thermodynamics, Hawking radiation, Trapping horizons Contents 1 Introduction . 2 2 Event horizons . 4 3 Local horizons . 8 4 Thermodynamics of black holes . 14 5 Area increase law . 17 6 Gravitational entropy . 19 7 The zeroth law . 22 8 The first law . 25 9 Hawking radiation for trapping horizons . 34 10 Fluid flow analogies . 36 11 Uniqueness . 37 12 Conclusion . 39 A. B. Nielsen Center for Theoretical Physics and School of Physics College of Natural Sciences, Seoul National University Seoul 151-742, Korea eujin@phya.snu.ac.kr 2 A. B. Nielsen 1 Introduction Black holes play a central role in physics. In astrophysics, they represent the end point of stellar collapse for sufficiently large stars.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Nature of the Blandford-Znajek Mechanism
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by CERN Document Server ON THE NATURE OF THE BLANDFORD-ZNAJEK MECHANISM Komissarov S.S. Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK. E-mail: serguei@maths.leeds.ac.uk It is widely accepted in the astrophysical community that the event horizon plays crucial role in the Blandford-Znajek mechanism of extraction of rotational energy of black holes. In fact, this view is a quintessence of the Membrane Paradigm of black holes which suggests that the event horizon, or rather the so-called stretched horizon, is similar to a rotating conducting sphere of finite resistivity. In this paper we argue that this interpretation is rather misleading and the proper explanation of the Blandford-Znajek mechanism has to be sought in the properties of the ergospheric region of black holes. 1 Blandford-Znajek solution and the Membrane Paradigm We start with describing some basic properties of steady-state force-free mag- netospheres of black-holes as discovered in [1] using the 3+1 formulation of electrodynamics. First we introduce vectors of electric and magnetic field as follows 1 E = F Bi = eijkF , (1) i it 2 jk where Fµν is the electromagnetic field tensor,and e is the Levi-Civita alternat- ing tensor. For steady-state axisymmetric solutions Eφ =0.Considerapolar flux tube of magnetic flux i j k Φ= B dSi (dSi = eijkdx dx ) Z (1) (2) The angular velocity of magnetic field lines defined as Ω=E /√γBθ = E /√γBr.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction to Black Hole Astrophysics, 2010 Gustavo E
    Lecture Notes Introduction to Black Hole Astrophysics, 2010 Gustavo E. Romero Introduction to black hole astrophysics Gustavo E. Romero Instituto Argentino de Radioastronomía, C.C. 5, Villa Elisa (1894), and Facultad de Cs. Astronómicas y Geofísicas, UNLP, Paseo del Bosque S/N, (1900) La Plata, Argentina, romero@fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar Es cosa averiguada que no se sabe nada, y que todos son ignorantes; y aun esto no se sabe de cierto, que, a saberse, ya se supiera algo: sospéchase. Quevedo Abstract. Black holes are perhaps the most strange and fascinating objects in the universe. Our understanding of space and time is pushed to its limits by the extreme conditions found in these objects. They can be used as natural laboratories to test the behavior of matter in very strong gravitational fields. Black holes seem to play a key role in the universe, powering a wide variety of phenomena, from X-ray binaries to active galactic nuclei. In these lecture notes the basics of black hole physics and astrophysics are reviewed. 1. Introduction Strictly speaking, black holes do not exist. Moreover, holes, of any kind, do not exist. You can talk about holes of course. For instance you can say: “there is a hole in the wall”. You can give many details of the hole: it is big, it is round shaped, light comes in through it. Even, perhaps, the hole could be such that you can go through to the outside. But I am sure that you do not think that there is a thing made out of nothingness in the wall.
    [Show full text]
  • Membrane Paradigm, Gravitational Θ-Term and Gauge/Gravity Duality
    UTTG-21-15 TCC-010-15 Membrane Paradigm, Gravitational Θ-Term and Gauge/Gravity Duality Willy Fischlera;b, Sandipan Kunduc aTheory Group, Department of Physics, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712, USA bTexas Cosmology Center, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712, USA cDepartment of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 14853, USA E-mail: fischler@physics.utexas.edu, kundu@cornell.edu Abstract: Following the membrane paradigm, we explore the effect of the gravitational Θ-term on the behavior of the stretched horizon of a black hole in (3 + 1)-dimensions. We reformulate the membrane paradigm from a quantum path-integral point of view where we interpret the macroscopic properties of the horizon as effects of integrating out the region inside the horizon. The gravitational Θ-term is a total derivative, how- ever, using our framework we show that this term affects the transport properties of the horizon. In particular, the horizon acquires a third order parity violating, dimensionless transport coefficient which affects the way localized perturbations scramble on the hori- zon. Then we consider a large-N gauge theory in (2 + 1)−dimensions which is dual to an asymptotically AdS background in (3 + 1)−dimensional spacetime to show that the Θ-term induces a non-trivial contact term in the energy-momentum tensor of the dual theory. As a consequence, the dual gauge theory in the presence of the Θ-term acquires the same third order parity violating transport coefficient. arXiv:1512.01238v2 [hep-th] 13 May 2016 Contents 1 Introduction1 2 Integrating
    [Show full text]
  • Appendices Appendix A
    Appendices Appendix A Mathematical Notation Used in this Book This appendix gives a brief description of the mathematical notation used in this book, especially in Chapters 5 to 9. In all cases scalar quantities are presented in simple math mode. Examples are mass m or M; fundamental constants c, G, etc.; and Greek letters γ, δ, φ, etc.. This does not include components of vectors and tensors, which are discussed below. A.1 Vector and Tensor Notation for Two- and Three-Dimensional Spaces Two and three-dimensional space notation is the same, as neither contains a time coordinate. A.1.1 Two- and Three-Dimensional Vector and 1-Form Notation Vectors in two and three dimensions are written as bold capital letters in math mode. Examples are momentum and velocity P and V ; electric and magnetic field E and B; etc. Components of vectors are written in the same font as the geometrical quantity, but not in boldface and with a upper index indicating which component it represents. Examples: P x, V r, Ey, and Bz. Roman subscripts are sometimes added to vectors or their components to distin- guish which object or type of physics problem is being discussed. Examples are the φ velocity of object #2 V2 or orbital velocity in Schwarzschild geometry Vorb,SH. 1-Forms for the above quantities are written in bold lower-case letters, also in math mode. Examples are the momentum and velocity 1-forms p and v; electric and magnetic 1-forms e and b; etc. Components are of these written in the same D.L.
    [Show full text]
  • The Case for Black Hole Thermodynamics Part II: Statistical Mechanics
    The case for black hole thermodynamics Part II: statistical mechanics David Wallace∗ October 7, 2017 Abstract I present in detail the case for regarding black hole thermodynam- ics as having a statistical-mechanical explanation in exact parallel with the statistical-mechanical explanation believed to underly the thermody- namics of other systems. (Here I presume that black holes are indeed thermodynamic systems in the fullest sense; I review the evidence for that conclusion in the prequel to this paper.) I focus on three lines of argument: (i) zero-loop and one-loop calculations in quantum general relativity un- derstood as a quantum field theory, using the path-integral formalism; (ii) calculations in string theory of the leading-order terms, higher-derivative corrections, and quantum corrections, in the black hole entropy formula for extremal and near-extremal black holes; (iii) recovery of the quali- tative and (in some cases) quantitative structure of black hole statistical mechanics via the AdS/CFT correspondence. In each case I briefly review the content of, and arguments for, the form of quantum gravity being used (effective field theory; string theory; AdS/CFT) at a (relatively) introduc- tory level: the paper is aimed at students and non-specialists and does not presume advanced knowledge of quantum gravity.. My conclusion is that the evidence for black hole statistical mechanics is as solid as we could reasonably expect it to be in the absence of a directly-empirically-verified theory of quantum gravity. 1 Introduction In the last forty years, the evidence has become overwhelming that stationary or near-stationary black holes behave, as far as any description by external ob- servers is concerned, exactly like ordinary thermodynamic systems.
    [Show full text]
  • Why Black Hole Information Loss Is Paradoxical
    Why black hole information loss is paradoxical David Wallace∗ October 10, 2017 Abstract I distinguish between two versions of the black hole information-loss paradox. The first arises from apparent failure of unitarity on the space- time of a completely evaporating black hole, which appears to be non- globally-hyperbolic; this is the most commonly discussed version of the paradox in the foundational and semipopular literature, and the case for calling it `paradoxical' is less than compelling. But the second arises from a clash between a fully-statistical-mechanical interpretation of black hole evaporation and the quantum-field-theoretic description used in deriva- tions of the Hawking effect. This version of the paradox arises long before a black hole completely evaporates, seems to be the version that has played a central role in quantum gravity, and is genuinely paradoxical. After ex- plicating the paradox, I discuss the implications of more recent work on AdS/CFT duality and on the `Firewall paradox', and conclude that the paradox is if anything now sharper. The article is written at a (relatively) introductory level and does not assume advanced knowledge of quantum gravity. 1 Introduction Not everyone understands Hawking's paradox the same way[.] Samir Mathur1 The black hole information loss paradox has been a constant source of dis- cussion in theoretical physics since Stephen Hawking (1976) first claimed that black hole evaporation is non-unitary and irreversible, but opinions about it differ sharply. The mainstream view in theoretical physics | especially that part of high-energy physics that has pursued string theory and string-theoretic approaches to quantum gravity | is that (a) the paradox is deeply puzzling and (b) it must ultimately be resolved so as to eliminate information loss.
    [Show full text]
  • Black Holes in String Theory
    Black holes in String Theory Samir D. Mathur The Ohio State University There are two main ideas in black hole physics … The first is the notion that the entropy of a black hole is given by its surface area A S = bek 4G (Bekenstein 72) This is mysterious for two reasons: (a) The entropy is proportional to the area rather than the volume (b) By the ‘no-hair’ theorem, there is nothing at the horizon, so what states are being counted by this entropy? The other issue is the black hole information paradox … In quantum mechanics, the vacuum can have fluctuations which produce a particle-antiparticle pair ∆E ∆t ~ ⇠ But if a fluctuation happens near the horizon, the particles do not have to re- annihilate : The negative gravitational potential gives the inner particle negative energy ( E = mc 2 GMm ) − r ∆E =0 ∆t = ! 1 Thus real particle pairs are continuously created (Hawking 74) Hole shrinks to a small size The essential issue: Vacuum fluctuations produce entangled states 1 + + = e e− + e−e + | i p2 1 = (01 + 10) p2 So the state of the radiation is entangled with the state of the remaining hole … The radiation does not have a state by itself, the state can only be defined when the radiation and interior are considered together The amount of this entanglement is very large ... If N particles are emitted, then there are 2 N possible arrangements We can call an electron a 0 and a positron a 1 111111 000000 …. …. + 010011 101100 + 000000 111111 Possibility A: Information loss — The evaporation goes on till the remnant has zero mass.
    [Show full text]