How Special Are Black Holes? Correspondence with saturons in generic theories

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that saturons, which are non-gravitational objects with maximal entropy, exhibit properties similar to black holes, including entropy, evaporation, and information retrieval, within a specific quantum field theory.

Contribution

It establishes a concrete correspondence between black holes and saturons in a renormalizable $SU(N)$ theory, showing they share key thermodynamic and information-theoretic features.

Findings

Saturons' entropy matches Bekenstein-Hawking formula

Saturons evaporate thermally at inverse radius temperature

Information retrieval time equals Page's time

Abstract

Black holes are considered to be exceptional due to their time evolution and information processing. However, it was proposed recently that these properties are generic for objects, the so-called saturons, that attain the maximal entropy permitted by unitarity. In the present paper, we verify this connection within a renormalizable $SU(N)$ invariant theory. We show that the spectrum of the theory contains a tower of bubbles representing bound states of $SU(N)$ Goldstones. Despite the absence of gravity, a saturated bound state exhibits a striking correspondence with a black hole: Its entropy is given by the Bekenstein-Hawking formula; semi-classically, the bubble evaporates at a thermal rate with a temperature equal to its inverse radius; the information retrieval time is equal to Page's time. The correspondence goes through a trans-theoretic entity of Poincar\'{e} Goldstone. The black hole/saturon correspondence has important implications for black hole physics, both fundamental and observational.