Information Consumption by Reissner-Nordstrom Black Holes

TL;DR

This paper investigates how charged fermions scatter off extremal Reissner-Nordstrom black holes, showing that information appears to be lost into inaccessible regions, with implications for the black hole information paradox.

Contribution

It demonstrates that in the large-N and S-wave approximations, information is effectively lost in Reissner-Nordstrom black holes, and reveals an infinite degeneracy of black hole ground states.

Findings

Information is carried into causally inaccessible regions.

Existence of infinite degeneracy of black hole ground states.

Results are obtained within the weak coupling domain.

Abstract

The low-energy scattering of charged fermions by extremal magnetic Reissner-Nordstrom black holes is analyzed in the large-$N$ and $S$-wave approximations. It is shown that (in these approximations) information is carried into a causally inaccessible region of spacetime, and thereby effectively lost. It is also shown that there is an infinite degeneracy of quantum black hole ground states, or ``remnants", which store --- but will not reveal --- the information. A notable feature of the analysis --- not shared by recent analyses of dilatonic black holes --- is that the key physical questions can be answered within the weak coupling domain. We regard these results as strong evidence that effective information loss occurs in our universe.