The Spacetime View of the Information Paradox

Abstract

In semiclassical gravity, the final state of black-hole evaporation cannot be described by a pure state. Nevertheless, we point out that the system can be described by a generalized pure state, which is not defined on a 3-dimensional hypersurface but on the 4-dimensional spacetime describing the whole Universe at all times. Unlike the conventional quantum state, such a generalized state treats time on an equal footing with space, which makes it well suited for systems that are both quantum and relativistic. In particular, such a generalized state contains a novel type of information encoded in the correlations between future and past, which avoids the black-hole information paradox.

7 pages, revised, to appear in Int. J. Quantum Inf

References in corpus (1)

• Resolving the black-hole information paradox by treating time on an equal footing with space

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Time Dependence of Hawking Radiation Entropy
• If time is a local observable, then Hawking radiation is unitary
• Lorentz-invariant Bohmian description of inelastic scattering in QFT
• Black hole information paradox without Hawking radiation
• Time in quantum gravity and black-hole information paradox
• AdS/CFT without holography: A hidden dimension on the CFT side and implications for black-hole entropy