Tunneling into fuzzball states

TL;DR

The paper proposes that collapsing matter shells can quantum tunnel into fuzzball states, providing a mechanism to resolve the black hole information paradox by balancing tunneling amplitude and state count.

Contribution

It introduces a tunneling mechanism for matter shells into fuzzball states, offering a potential resolution to the black hole information paradox.

Findings

Shells can tunnel into fuzzball states before significant radiation occurs.

The tunneling amplitude is small, but the large number of fuzzball states compensates.

This process preserves information, addressing the paradox.

Abstract

String theory suggests that black hole microstates are quantum, horizon sized `fuzzballs', rather than smooth geometries with horizon. Radiation from fuzzballs can carry information and does not lead to information loss. But if we let a shell of matter collapse then it creates a horizon, and it seems that subsequent radiation will lead to information loss. We argue that the resolution to this problem is that the shell can tunnel to the fuzzball configurations. The amplitude for tunneling is small because we are relating two macroscopically different configurations, but the number of states that we can tunnel to, given through the Bekenstein entropy, is very large. These small and large numbers can cancel each other, making it possible for the shell to tunnel into fuzzball states before a significant amount of radiation has been emitted. This offers a way to resolve the information paradox.