Entangled black holes as ciphers of hidden information

TL;DR

This paper proposes that black hole information is preserved through entanglement correlations within a tripartite quantum system, challenging the notion of information loss in black hole evaporation.

Contribution

It introduces a model where black hole entropy arises from entanglement, encoding information in correlations that remain until late in evaporation.

Findings

Information is encoded in correlations within a tripartite system.

Black hole entropy is primarily due to entanglement entropy.

Information remains recoverable until very late in black hole evaporation.

Abstract

The black-hole information paradox has fueled a fascinating effort to reconcile the predictions of general relativity and those of quantum mechanics. Gravitational considerations teach us that black holes must trap everything that falls into them. Quantum mechanically the mass of a black hole leaks away as featureless (Hawking) radiation. However, if Hawking's analysis turned out to be accurate then the information would be irretrievably lost and a fundamental axiom of quantum mechanics, that of unitary evolution, would likewise fail. Here we show that the information about the matter that collapses to form a black hole becomes encoded into pure correlations within a tripartite quantum system, the quantum analog of a one-time pad until very late in the evaporation, provided we accept the view that the thermodynamic entropy of a black hole is due to entropy of entanglement. In this view the black hole entropy is primarily due to trans-event horizon entanglement between external modes neighboring the black hole and internal degrees of freedom of the black hole.