Comments on black holes I: The possibility of complementarity

TL;DR

This paper critiques the AMPS argument against black hole complementarity, proposing that fuzzball microstates in string theory offer an alternative view where infalling matter is absorbed, challenging traditional notions of the horizon.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of fuzzball complementarity, suggesting a new framework for understanding black hole horizons that bypasses the need for a smooth horizon and addresses the AMPS paradox.

Findings

Measurements outside the horizon are statistically identical for vacuum and radiation cases.

Fuzzball microstates do not allow continuation through the Planck scale regime.

Fuzzball complementarity posits absorption of infalling matter by the microstate surface.

Abstract

We comment on a recent paper of Almheiri, Marolf, Polchinski and Sully who argue against black hole complementarity based on the claim that an infalling observer 'burns' as he approaches the horizon. We show that in fact measurements made by an infalling observer outside the horizon are statistically identical for the cases of vacuum at the horizon and radiation emerging from a stretched horizon. This forces us to follow the dynamics all the way to the horizon, where we need to know the details of Planck scale physics. We note that in string theory the fuzzball structure of microstates does not give any place to 'continue through' this Planck regime. AMPS argue that interactions near the horizon preclude traditional complementarity. But the conjecture of 'fuzzball complementarity' works in the opposite way: the infalling quantum is absorbed by the fuzzball surface, and it is the resulting dynamics that is conjectured to admit a complementary description.