Gauge/Gravity Duality and the Black Hole Interior

TL;DR

This paper argues that typical black holes with field theory duals possess firewalls at the horizon, challenging the ER=EPR conjecture by showing that entanglement does not necessarily imply smooth wormhole geometries.

Contribution

It provides a new argument for firewalls that does not rely on entanglement with external systems and critiques the geometrization of entanglement in ER=EPR.

Findings

Black holes with field theory duals have firewalls at the horizon.

Correlations in highly entangled states cannot be represented as smooth wormholes.

The ER=EPR conjecture does not hold for generic highly entangled states.

Abstract

We present a further argument that typical black holes with field theory duals have firewalls at the horizon. This argument makes no reference to entanglement between the black hole and any distant system, and so is not evaded by identifying degrees of freedom inside the black hole with those outside. We also address the ER=EPR conjecture of Maldacena and Susskind, arguing that the correlations in generic highly entangled states cannot be geometrized as a smooth wormhole.