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The information paradox: Conflicts and resolutions

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Abstract

Many relativists have been long convinced that black hole evaporation leads to information loss or remnants. String theorists have however not been too worried about the issue, largely due to a belief that the Hawking argument for information loss is flawed in its details. A recently derived inequality shows that the Hawking argument for black holes with horizon can in fact be made rigorous. What happens instead is that in string theory, black hole microstates have no horizons. Thus the evolution of radiation quanta with E∼kT is modified by order unity at the horizon, and we resolve the information paradox.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks all his collaborators who have, over the years, helped put together the ideas discussed here. He also thanks all the members of the black hole community for their valuable comments and discussions. This work was supported in part by DOE grant DE-FG02-91ER-40690.

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  1. Department of Physics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

    SAMIR D MATHUR

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MATHUR, S.D. The information paradox: Conflicts and resolutions. Pramana - J Phys 79, 1059–1073 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12043-012-0417-z

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