2017/08/30 by Andrew Arrasmith, Andreas Albrecht, Wojciech H. Zurek · 17 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Black hole (networking) #Black hole information paradox #Hawking #Hawking radiation #Micro black hole #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Quantum #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum decoherence #Superposition principle #gr-qc #hep-th #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41467-019-08426-4
published in Nature Communications 10(1), 1024 (Nature Portfolio) · 6 pages, 2 figures
arxiv created 2017/08/30 · openalex created_date 2017/09/15 · openalex publication_date 2019/03/04 · arxiv updated 2019/04/22 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
An environment interacting with a system acquires information about it, e.g. about its location. The resulting decoherence is thought to be responsible for the emergence of the classical realm of our Universe out of the quantum substrate. However, this view of the emergence of the classical is sometimes dismissed as a consequence of insufficient isolation and, hence, as non-fundamental. In contrast to many other systems, a black hole can never be isolated from its Hawking radiation which carries information about its location, making this lack of isolation fundamental. Here we consider the decoherence of a "black hole Schrödinger cat"-a non-local superposition of a Schwarzschild black hole in two distinct locations-due to its Hawking radiation. The resulting decoherence rate turns out to be given by a surprisingly simple equation. Moreover, and in contrast to known cases of decoherence, this rate does not involve Planck's constant ħ.