Resolving the black-hole information paradox by treating time on an equal footing with space

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel approach to the black-hole information paradox by using many-fingered block-time wave functions that treat time and space equally, ensuring information conservation during black-hole evaporation.

Contribution

It introduces a framework where the universe's wave function preserves information by correlating past ingoing and future outgoing Hawking particles, challenging traditional time-evolution perspectives.

Findings

Information is conserved via correlations in the full wave function.

Time evolution and 'state at a given time' are fundamentally irrelevant.

The approach offers a resolution to the black-hole information paradox.

Abstract

Pure states in quantum field theory can be represented by many-fingered block-time wave functions, which treat time on an equal footing with space and make the notions of "time evolution" and "state at a given time" fundamentally irrelevant. Instead of information destruction resulting from an attempt to use a "state at a given time" to describe semi-classical black-hole evaporation, the full many-fingered block-time wave function of the universe conserves information by describing the correlations of outgoing Hawking particles in the future with ingoing Hawking particles in the past.