In this paper, we analyze whether quantum correlations between successive steps of evaporation can open any way to resolve the black hole information paradox. Recently a celebrated result in literature shows that `small' correction to leading order Hawking analysis fails to restore unitarity in black hole evaporation. We study a toy qubit model of evaporation allowing small quantum correlations between successive steps and verify the previous result. Then we generalize the concept of correction to Hawking state by relaxing the `smallness' condition. Our result generates a nontrivial upper and lower bound on change in entanglement entropy in the evaporation process. This gives us a quantitative measure of correction that would mathematically facilitate restoration of unitarity in black hole evaporation. We then investigate whether this result is compatible to the established physical constraints of unitary evolution of a state in a subsystem. We find that the generalized bound on entanglement entropy leads to significant deviation from Page curve. This leads us to agree with the recent claim in literature that no amount of correction in the form of Bell pair states would lead to any resolution to the information paradox.
In this paper, we analyze whether quantum correlations between successive steps of evaporation can open any way to resolve the black hole information paradox. Recently a celebrated result in literature shows that small' correction to leading order Hawking analysis fails to restore unitarity in black hole evaporation. We study a toy qubit model of evaporation allowing small quantum correlations between successive steps and verify the previous result. Then we generalize the concept of correction to Hawking state by relaxing the smallness' condition. Our result generates a nontrivial upper and lower bound on change in entanglement entropy in the evaporation process. This gives us a quantitative measure of correction that would mathematically facilitate restoration of unitarity in black hole evaporation. We then investigate whether this result is compatible to the established physical constraints of unitary evolution of a state in a subsystem. We find that the generalized bound on entanglement entropy leads to significant deviation from Page curve. This leads us to agree with the recent claim in literature that no amount of correction in the form of Bell pair states would lead to any resolution to the information paradox.
We investigate quantum correlations between successive steps of black hole evaporation and investigate whether they might resolve the black hole information paradox. ‘Small’ corrections in various models were shown to be unable to restore unitarity. We study a toy qubit model of evaporation that allows small quantum correlations between successive steps and reaffirm previous results. Then, we relax the ‘smallness’ condition and find a nontrivial upper and lower bound on the entanglement entropy change during the evaporation process. This gives a quantitative measure of the size of the correction needed to restore unitarity. We find that these entanglement entropy bounds lead to a significant deviation from the expected Page curve.
Hawking's argument about non-unitary evolution of black holes is often questioned on the ground that it doesn't acknowledge the quantum correlations in radiation process. However, recently it has been shown that adding `small' correction to leading order Hawking analysis, accounting for the correlations, doesn't help to restore unitarity. This paper generalizes the bound on entanglement entropy by relaxing the `smallness' condition and configures the parameters for possible recovery of information from an evaporating black hole. The new bound effectively puts an upper limit on increase in entanglement entropy. It also facilitates to relate the change in entanglement entropy to the amount of correction to Hawking state.
The complete evaporation of black holes, as a natural endpoint of Hawking radiation, gives rise to the black hole information paradox, which fundamentally challenges the principles of unitarity and information conservation in quantum mechanics. Although the AdS/CFT correspondence indicates that information is preserved during black hole evaporation, the precise mechanism by which it is recovered from the Hawking radiation remains an open question. To explore a potential resolution, we investigate information transfer in a spin-chain model featuring an effective horizon realized via position-dependent couplings within an XY spin chain. We derive and demonstrate Page curve-like behavior, and analyze the transmission of quantum resources, such as entanglement and coherence, across the effective horizon. Our results show that quantum resources initially localized within an interior subsystem can be transferred to the exterior via particle radiation through the horizon. This study provides a novel perspective from quantum simulation on how information may escape from black holes, thereby contributing to the further understanding of the black hole information paradox.
Thirty years ago, John Preskill concluded "that the information loss paradox may well presage a revolution in fundamental physics" and mused that "Conceivably, the puzzle of black hole evaporation portends a scientific revolution as sweeping as that that led to the formulation of quantum theory in the early 20th century." Many still agree with this assessment. On the other hand, it seems to me the "paradox" has little to do with the physical world but rather, at best, simply points out the possible inconsistency of two, already disparate, theories (mathematical models) of nature, general relativity and quantum mechanics, with virtually no conceivable observational consequences. The information paradox hinges on the concepts of a pure quantum state, the unitarity of quantum mechanics, and Hawking's semi-classical calculation of black hole evaporation. I used the qualifier "at best" above because, for me, the concept of a quantum state is far more restrictive than required by the paradox while unitarity is not a property of nature but rather of a mathematical model and is already violated by the process of making a measurement. Furthermore, the semi-classical calculation of Hawking is surely of limited applicability.
We present a minimal, fully unitary toy model of black hole evaporation in which information recovery emerges from non-factorized global states and observer-dependent access. The model reproduces a Page-like entropy curve for Hawking radiation without invoking fundamental information loss, horizon microstructure, or spacetime geometry at the microscopic level. The result supports the interpretation that the black hole information paradox arises from regime-dependent coarse-graining rather than from a breakdown of quantum unitarity.
Black hole evaporation is one of the most striking phenomena at the interface between gravity and quantum physics. In Hawking's semi-classical treatment, where matter is quantum mechanical and the spacetime is definite and classical, evaporation leads to an apparent loss of unitarity of the overall evolution, and to the so-called black hole information paradox. Here, we go beyond this semi-classical treatment and formulate a toy quantum model of black hole evaporation that allows the black hole to evolve into a superposition of being fully evaporated and not fully evaporated, consistent with the Hawking particles being in a coherent superposition of different energy levels. We model Hawking particle production by the repeated action of quantum-controlled unitaries, generating emission from the quantum black hole and accounting for a quantum coherent back-reaction on the black hole matter state. We show that the probability of full annihilation of the black hole matter increases with time until the black hole is, asymptotically, fully evaporated in every branch of the quantum superposition. We prove that under natural assumptions, this evaporation model is unitary, such that the initial state can in principle be recovered from the final asymptotic state of the radiation.