26.06.2019 (Wednesday)

The entropy of bulk quantum fields and the entanglement wedge of an evaporating black hole

Regular Seminar Henry Maxfield (UCSB)

at:
14:00 IC
room H503
abstract:

Semiclassical gravity is famously in tension with the unitary evolution of quantum mechanics when black holes evaporate. I'll describe a semiclassical calculation that nonetheless reproduces signatures of unitarity, namely the "Page curve" of entropy and the Hayden-Preskill protocol. This involves finding a quantum extremal surface, an extremum of the generalised entropy (the area in Planck units plus the entropy of exterior matter), which in the context of an evaporating black hole can exist far from a classical extremal surface. The calculations are performed in an exactly solvable model of Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity coupled to conformal matter. I will conclude by commenting and speculating on the implications for the information paradox.