Black-hole information puzzle: A generic string-inspired approach

TL;DR

This paper proposes a string-inspired approach to resolve the black-hole information puzzle by treating negative-frequency Hawking particles as virtual particles absorbed by the black hole, ensuring unitarity during evaporation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel perspective that avoids tracing out negative-frequency particles, aligning black hole evaporation with quantum unitarity based on string theory insights.

Findings

Complete evaporation is compatible with unitarity.

Treating negative-frequency particles as virtual resolves the information puzzle.

The approach aligns with black hole thermodynamics laws.

Abstract

Given the insight steming from string theory, the origin of the black-hole (BH) information puzzle is traced back to the assumption that it is physically meaningful to trace out the density matrix over negative-frequency Hawking particles. Instead, treating them as virtual particles necessarily absorbed by the BH in a manner consistent with the laws of BH thermodynamics, and tracing out the density matrix only over physical BH states, the complete evaporation becomes compatible with unitarity.