Perturbative Understanding of Non-Perturbative Processes and Quantumization versus Classicalization

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a fully quantum perturbative approach, treating backgrounds as multi-particle states, reproduces and extends semiclassical non-perturbative results, clarifying the processes of quantumization and classicalization, especially in black hole formation.

Contribution

It introduces a perturbative quantum framework for non-perturbative phenomena, providing new insights into quantumization and classicalization processes, particularly in gravitational contexts.

Findings

Perturbative quantum treatment reproduces semiclassical results.

Quantumization is exponentially suppressed compared to classicalization.

Black hole formation via classicalization is efficient, but decay back to quantum states is suppressed.

Abstract

In some instances of study of quantum evolution of classical backgrounds it is considered inevitable to resort to non-perturbative methods at the price of treating the system semiclassically. We show that a fully quantum perturbative treatment, in which the background is resolved as a multi-particle state, recovers the semiclassical non-perturbative results and allows going beyond. We reproduce particle-creation by a classical field in a theory of two scalars as well as in scalar QED in terms of scattering processes of high multiplicity. The multi-particle treatment also gives a transparent picture of why a single-process transition from a classical to a quantum state, which we call quantumization, is exponentially suppressed, whereas the opposite process, classicalization, can take place swiftly if the microstate degeneracy of the classical state is high. An example is provided by the $N$-graviton portrait of a black hole: a black hole can form efficiently via a $2\to N$ classicalization process in the collision of high-energy particles but its quantumization via a decay $N \to 2$ is exponentially suppressed.