2009/05/27 by Samir D. Mathur · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1142/s0218271809016004
published as Int.J.Mod.Phys.D18:2215-2219,2009 · 6 pages, Latex (Essay awarded honorable mention in the Gravity Research Foundation essay competition 2009)
arxiv created 2009/05/27 · openalex publication_date 2009/12/31 · arxiv updated 2010/04/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
When a shell collapses through its horizon, semiclassical physics suggests that information cannot escape from this horizon. One might hope that nonperturbative quantum gravity effects will change this situation and avoid the information paradox. We note that string theory has provided a set of states over which the wave function of the shell can spread, and that the number of these states is large enough that such a spreading would significantly modify the classically expected evolution. In this article we perform a simple estimate of the spreading time, showing that it is much shorter than the Hawking evaporation time for the hole. Thus information can emerge from the hole through the relaxation of the shell state into a linear combination of fuzzballs.