Falling into a black hole
arXiv:0705.3828 · doi:10.1142/S0218271808012309
Abstract
String theory tells us that quantum gravity has a dual description as a field theory (without gravity). We use the field theory dual to ask what happens to an object as it falls into the simplest black hole: the 2-charge extremal hole. In the field theory description the wavefunction of a particle is spread over a large number of `loops', and the particle has a well-defined position in space only if it has the same `position' on each loop. For the infalling particle we find one definition of `same position' on each loop, but there is a different definition for outgoing particles and no canonical definition in general in the horizon region. Thus the meaning of `position' becomes ill-defined inside the horizon.
8 pages, 5 figures (this essay received an honorable mention in the 2007 essay competition of the Gravity Research Foundation)
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