Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: The firewall paradox is often presented as arising from double entanglement, but I argue that more generally the paradox is double purity. Near-horizon modes are purified by the interior, in the infalling vacuum. Hence, they cannot also be pure alone, or in combination with any third system, as demanded by unitarity. This conflict arises independently of the Page time, for entangled and for pure states. It implies that identifications of Hilbert spaces cannot resolve the paradox. Traditional complementarity requires the unitary identification of infalling matter with a scrambled subsystem of the Hawking radiation. Extending this map to the infalling vacuum overdetermines the out-state. More general complementarity maps (``$A={R}_{B}$,'' ``$\mathrm{ER}=\mathrm{EPR}$'') necessarily fail when the near-horizon zone is pure. I argue that pure-zone states span the microcanonical ensemble, and that this suffices to make the horizon a special place. I advocate that the ability to detect the horizon locally, rather than the degree or probability of violence, is what makes firewalls problematic. Conversely, if the production of matter at the horizon can be dynamically understood and shown to be consistent, then firewalls do not constitute a violation of the equivalence principle.
Author: Raphael Bousso
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2054920600