Submerging islands through thermalization

TL;DR

This paper explores how transient entanglement islands in black hole radiation can temporarily reveal the black hole interior, with the appearance and duration controlled by the amount of radiation probed, across different coupled reservoir scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces new scenarios involving entanglement islands in black hole radiation, demonstrating how their emergence and duration depend on the radiation probing, including complex phase structures.

Findings

Entanglement islands appear transiently in black hole radiation.

The duration of islands is controlled by the amount of radiation probed.

A phase transition can occur, leading to thermalization and disappearance of islands.

Abstract

We illustrate scenarios in which Hawking radiation collected in finite regions of a reservoir provides temporary access to the interior of black holes through transient entanglement "islands". Whether these islands appear and the amount of time for which they dominate - sometimes giving way to a thermalization transition - is controlled by the amount of radiation we probe. In the first scenario, two reservoirs are coupled to an eternal black hole. The second scenario involves two holographic quantum gravitating systems at different temperatures interacting through a Rindler-like reservoir, which acts as a heat engine maintaining thermal equilibrium. The latter situation, which has an intricate phase structure, describes two eternal black holes radiating into each other through a shared reservoir.