Cool horizons lead to information loss

TL;DR

This paper discusses how black hole information loss during evaporation involves non-invertible mappings and horizon structure, challenging some existing models and emphasizing the importance of invertibility for unitarity.

Contribution

It demonstrates that black holes formed in generic states have horizon structures that enforce invertibility of the initial to final state map, impacting models addressing the information paradox.

Findings

Models by Susskind, Papadodimas, and Maldacena make the initial-final state map non-invertible.

Requiring invertibility mandates horizon structure even for pure states.

Black holes formed in generic states support the invertibility argument.

Abstract

There are two evidences for information loss during black hole evaporation: (i) a pure state evolves to a mixed state and (ii) the map from the initial state to final state is non-invertible. Any proposed resolution of the information paradox must address both these issues. The firewall argument focuses only on the first and this leads to order one deviations from the Unruh vacuum for maximally entangled black holes. The nature of the argument does not extend to black holes in pure states. It was shown by Avery, Puhm and the author that requiring the initial state to final state map to be invertible mandates structure at the horizon even for pure states. The proof works if black holes can be formed in generic states and in this paper we show that this is indeed the case. We also demonstrate how models proposed by Susskind, Papadodimas et al. and Maldacena et al. end up making the initial to final state map non-invertible and thus make the horizon "cool" at the cost of unitarity.