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Title: Spacetime surgery for black hole fireworks
Abstract We construct an explicit model for the black hole to white hole transition (known as the black hole fireworks scenario) using the cut-and-paste technique. We model a black hole collapse using the evolution of a time-like shell in the background of the loop quantum gravity inspired metric and then the space-like shell analysis to construct the firework geometry. Our simple and well-defined analysis removes some subtle issues that were present in the previous literature [1] and makes the examination of the junction conditions easier. We further point out that the infalling and asymptotic observers, both in ours and the original scenario in ref. [1], encounter quite different physics. While the proper time of the bounce for an infalling observer can be determined without ambiguity, the bouncing time interval for the asymptotic observer can be chosen arbitrarily by changing how one cuts and pastes the spacetimes outside the event horizons. It is puzzling that the proper time of a distant (rather than infalling) observer is subject to randomness since the infalling observer is supposed to experience a stronger quantum gravity effect. This result might suggest that a black hole firework scenario does not allow for the existence of an effectively classical spacetime inside the horizon. The main message is therefore that even if we strictly follow the thin shell formalism to cut and paste spacetimes, this does not guarantee that the resulting spacetime offers a physically reasonable background. more »« less
Anderson, Paul R.; Scofield, Zachary P.; Traschen, Jennie
(, Proceedings of the Sixteenth Marcel Grossmann Meeting on General Relativity)
Vereshchagin, G.; Ruffini, R.
(Ed.)
The symmetric two-point function for a massless, minimally coupled scalar field in the Unruh state is examined for Schwarzschild-de Sitter spacetime in two dimensions. This function grows linearly in terms of a time coordinate that is well-defined on the future black hole and cosmological horizons, when the points are split in the space direction. This type of behavior also occurs in two dimensions for other static black hole spacetimes when the field is in the Unruh state, and at late times it occurs in spacetimes where a black hole forms from the collapse of a null shell. The generalization to the case of the symmetric two-point function in two dimensions for a massive scalar field in Schwarzschild-de Sitter spacetime is discussed.
Pasterski, Sabrina; Verlinde, Herman
(, Journal of High Energy Physics)
A bstract We build on the observation by Hawking, Perry and Strominger that a global black hole space-time supports a large number of soft hair degrees of freedom to shed new light on the firewall argument by Almheiri, Marolf, Polchinski, and Sully. We propose that the soft hair Goldstone mode is encoded in a classical transition function that connects the asymptotic and near horizon region. The entropy carried by the soft hair is part of the black hole entropy and encoded in the outside geometry. We argue that the infalling observer automatically measures the classical value of the soft mode before reaching the horizon and that this measurement implements a code subspace projection that enables the reconstruction of interior operators. We use the soft hair dynamics to introduce an observer dependent notion of the firewall and show that for an infalling observer it recedes inwards into the black hole interior: the observer never encounters a firewall before reaching the singularity. Our results indicate that the HPS black hole soft hair plays an essential role in dissolving the AMPS firewall.
The image of a supermassive black hole surrounded by an optically-thin, radiatively-inefficient accretion flow, like that observed with the Event Horizon Telescope, is characterized by a bright ring of emission surrounding the black-hole shadow. In the Kerr spacetime this bright ring, when narrow, closely traces the boundary of the shadow and can, with appropriate calibration, serve as its proxy. The present paper expands the validity of this statement by considering two particular spacetime geometries: a solution to the field equations of a modified gravity theory and another that parametrically deviates from Kerr but recovers the Kerr spacetime when its deviation parameters vanish. A covariant, axisymmetric analytic model of the accretion flow based on conservation laws and spanning a broad range of plasma conditions is utilized to calculate synthetic non-Kerr black-hole images, which are then analysed and characterized. We find that in all spacetimes: (i) it is the gravitationally-lensed unstable photon orbit that plays the critical role in establishing the diameter of the rings observed in black-hole images, not the event horizon or the innermost stable circular orbit, (ii) bright rings in these images scale in size with, and encompass, the boundaries of the black-hole shadows, even when deviating significantly from Kerr, and (iii) uncertainties in the physical properties of the accreting plasma introduce subdominant corrections to the relation between the diameter of the image and the diameter of the black-hole shadow. These results provide theoretical justification for using black-hole images to probe and test the spacetimes of supermassive black holes.
Levine, Adam; Shaghoulian, Edgar
(, Journal of High Energy Physics)
A bstract Black hole event horizons and cosmological event horizons share many properties, making it natural to ask whether our recent advances in understanding black holes generalize to cosmology. To this end, we discuss a paradox that occurs if observers can access what lies beyond their cosmological horizon in the same way that they can access what lies beyond a black hole horizon. In particular, distinct observers with distinct horizons may encode the same portion of spacetime, violating the no-cloning theorem of quantum mechanics. This paradox is due precisely to the observer-dependence of the cosmological horizon — the sharpest difference from a black hole horizon — although we will argue that the gravity path integral avoids the paradox in controlled examples.
Dong, Xi; Qi, Xiao-Liang; Shangnan, Zhou; Yang, Zhenbin
(, Journal of High Energy Physics)
null
(Ed.)
A bstract Entanglement entropy, or von Neumann entropy, quantifies the amount of uncertainty of a quantum state. For quantum fields in curved space, entanglement entropy of the quantum field theory degrees of freedom is well-defined for a fixed background geometry. In this paper, we propose a generalization of the quantum field theory entanglement entropy by including dynamical gravity. The generalized quantity named effective entropy, and its Renyi entropy generalizations, are defined by analytic continuation of a replica calculation. The replicated theory is defined as a gravitational path integral with multiple copies of the original boundary conditions, with a co-dimension-2 brane at the boundary of region we are studying. We discuss different approaches to define the region in a gauge invariant way, and show that the effective entropy satisfies the quantum extremal surface formula. When the quantum fields carry a significant amount of entanglement, the quantum extremal surface can have a topology transition, after which an entanglement island region appears. Our result generalizes the Hubeny-Rangamani-Takayanagi formula of holographic entropy (with quantum corrections) to general geometries without asymptotic AdS boundary, and provides a more solid framework for addressing problems such as the Page curve of evaporating black holes in asymptotic flat spacetime. We apply the formula to two example systems, a closed two-dimensional universe and a four-dimensional maximally extended Schwarzchild black hole. We discuss the analog of the effective entropy in random tensor network models, which provides more concrete understanding of quantum information properties in general dynamical geometries. We show that, in absence of a large boundary like in AdS space case, it is essential to introduce ancilla that couples to the original system, in order for correctly characterizing quantum states and correlation functions in the random tensor network. Using the superdensity operator formalism, we study the system with ancilla and show how quantum information in the entanglement island can be reconstructed in a state-dependent and observer-dependent map. We study the closed universe (without spatial boundary) case and discuss how it is related to open universe.
Lin, Wei-Chen, Yeom, Dong-han, and Stojkovic, Dejan. Spacetime surgery for black hole fireworks. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10616493. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics 2025.01 Web. doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2025/01/098.
Lin, Wei-Chen, Yeom, Dong-han, & Stojkovic, Dejan. Spacetime surgery for black hole fireworks. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2025 (01). Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10616493. https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2025/01/098
@article{osti_10616493,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Spacetime surgery for black hole fireworks},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10616493},
DOI = {10.1088/1475-7516/2025/01/098},
abstractNote = {Abstract We construct an explicit model for the black hole to white hole transition (known as the black hole fireworks scenario) using the cut-and-paste technique. We model a black hole collapse using the evolution of a time-like shell in the background of the loop quantum gravity inspired metric and then the space-like shell analysis to construct the firework geometry. Our simple and well-defined analysis removes some subtle issues that were present in the previous literature [1] and makes the examination of the junction conditions easier. We further point out that the infalling and asymptotic observers, both in ours and the original scenario in ref. [1], encounter quite different physics. While the proper time of the bounce for an infalling observer can be determined without ambiguity, the bouncing time interval for the asymptotic observer can be chosen arbitrarily by changing how one cuts and pastes the spacetimes outside the event horizons. It is puzzling that the proper time of a distant (rather than infalling) observer is subject to randomness since the infalling observer is supposed to experience a stronger quantum gravity effect. This result might suggest that a black hole firework scenario does not allow for the existence of an effectively classical spacetime inside the horizon. The main message is therefore that even if we strictly follow the thin shell formalism to cut and paste spacetimes, this does not guarantee that the resulting spacetime offers a physically reasonable background.},
journal = {Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics},
volume = {2025},
number = {01},
publisher = {IOP},
author = {Lin, Wei-Chen and Yeom, Dong-han and Stojkovic, Dejan},
}
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