Quantization in black hole backgrounds

Abstract

Quantum field theory in a semiclassical background can be derived as an approximation to quantum gravity from a weak-coupling expansion in the inverse Planck mass. Such an expansion is studied for evolution on "nice-slices" in the spacetime describing a black hole of mass M. Arguments for a breakdown of this expansion are presented, due to significant gravitational coupling between fluctuations, which is consistent with the statement that existing calculations of information loss in black holes are not reliable. For a given fluctuation, the coupling to subsequent fluctuations becomes of order unity by a time of order M^3. Lack of a systematic derivation of the weakly-coupled/semiclassical approximation would indicate a role for the non-perturbative dynamics of gravity, and possibly for the proposal that such dynamics has an essentially non-local quality.

28 pages, 4 figures, harvmac. v2: added refs, minor clarifications

References in corpus (31)

• The Large N Limit of Superconformal Field Theories and Supergravity
• The World as a Hologram
• Information in Black Hole Radiation
• Evanescent Black Holes
• The Stretched Horizon and Black Hole Complementarity
• Dimensional Reduction in Quantum Gravity
• Information Loss in Black Holes
• Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant
• The Trouble with de Sitter Space
• The black hole final state
• Cosmological Breaking of Supersymmetry?
• Observables in effective gravity
• Black Holes and Massive Remnants
• Black Hole Complementarity vs. Locality
• Black hole information, unitarity, and nonlocality
• Locality in quantum gravity and string theory
• The Inside Story: Quasilocal Tachyons and Black Holes
• Precursors, black holes, and a locality bound
• Recurrent Nightmares?: Measurement Theory in de Sitter Space
• Tachyon Condensation and Black Strings
• The information paradox and the locality bound
• The black hole information paradox
• (Non)perturbative gravity, nonlocality, and nice slices
• Quantum Mechanics of Black Holes
• Comments on the black hole information problem
• Final state boundary condition of the Schwarzschild black hole
• Relational observables in 2d quantum gravity
• Some Thoughts on the Quantum Theory of de Sitter Space
• Resolving the black hole information paradox
• Space-like Singularities and Thermalization
• String Theory and Black Hole Complementarity

Cited by in corpus (42)

• Better Late than Never: Information Retrieval from Black Holes
• Time Dependence of Hawking Radiation Entropy
• Semiclassical relations and IR effects in de Sitter and slow-roll space-times
• Cosmological observables, IR growth of fluctuations, and scale-dependent anisotropies
• The gravitational S-matrix
• Black holes, quantum information, and unitary evolution
• Conservative solutions to the black hole information problem
• Nonviolent nonlocality
• Models for unitary black hole disintegration
• Possible observational windows for quantum effects from black holes
• A Matrix Model for Black Hole Thermalization
• Is the firewall consistent?: Gedanken experiments on black hole complementarity and firewall proposal
• Unitarity and fuzzball complementarity: "Alice fuzzes but may not even know it!"
• Nonviolent unitarization: basic postulates to soft quantum structure of black holes
• A global picture of quantum de Sitter space
• Quantum information transfer and models for black hole mechanics
• High energy scattering in gravity and supergravity
• High-energy gravitational scattering and black hole resonances
• Nonlocality vs. complementarity: a conservative approach to the information problem
• Matrix Models for the Black Hole Information Paradox
• Semi-classical black holes with large N re-scaling and information loss problem
• Fluctuating geometries, q-observables, and infrared growth in inflationary spacetimes
• Modulated Hawking radiation and a nonviolent channel for information release
• Enhanced Black Hole Horizon Fluctuations
• High-energy black hole production
• Asymptotic Symmetries in de Sitter and Inflationary Spacetimes
• Is string theory a theory of quantum gravity?
• Statistical physics of black holes as quantum-mechanical systems
• Quantum Transitions Between Classical Histories: Bouncing Cosmologies
• Qubit Transport Model for Unitary Black Hole Evaporation without Firewalls
• The Kramers-Moyal Equation of the Cosmological Comoving Curvature Perturbation
• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Gravity and Information
• Schrödinger evolution of the Hawking state
• Quantum evolution of the Hawking state for black holes
• Schrödinger evolution of two-dimensional black holes
• Superluminal Travel Made Possible (in two dimensions)
• Linking the trans-Planckian and the information loss problems in black hole physics
• Entropy creation inside black holes points to observer complementarity
• Beyond the Planck scale
• Soft gravitons as Goldstone modes of spontaneously broken asymptotic symmetries in de Sitter spacetimes
• Perturbative quantum consistency near black-hole horizon formation
• Schwarzschild black hole states and entropies on a nice slice