A holographic model for black hole complementarity

TL;DR

This paper presents a holographic model of black hole complementarity where interior and exterior descriptions are connected through decoherence, providing insights into the black hole information paradox.

Contribution

It introduces a holographic framework linking interior effective field theory with exterior evolution, and identifies decoherence time with scrambling time in a fast-scrambling model.

Findings

Decoherence time matches scrambling time in the model.

Holographic description links interior and exterior black hole physics.

Supports the idea that decoherence and bulk effects are complementary.

Abstract

We explore a version of black hole complementarity, where an approximate semiclassical effective field theory for interior infalling degrees of freedom emerges holographically from an exact evolution of exterior degrees of freedom. The infalling degrees of freedom have a complementary description in terms of outgoing Hawking radiation and must eventually decohere with respect to the exterior Hamiltonian, leading to a breakdown of the semiclassical description for an infaller. Trace distance is used to quantify the difference between the complementary time evolutions, and to define a decoherence time. We propose a dictionary where the evolution with respect to the bulk effective Hamiltonian corresponds to mean field evolution in the holographic theory. In a particular model for the holographic theory, which exhibits fast scrambling, the decoherence time coincides with the scrambling time. The results support the hypothesis that decoherence of the infalling holographic state and disruptive bulk effects near the curvature singularity are complementary descriptions of the same physics, which is an important step toward resolving the black hole information paradox.