Work

Measurements without probabilities in the final state proposal

Year: 2014

Type: article

Abstract: The black hole final state proposal reconciles the infalling vacuum with the unitarity of the Hawking radiation, but only for some experiments. We study experiments that first verify the exterior, then the interior purification of the same Hawking particle. (This is the same protocol that renders the firewall paradox operationally meaningful in standard quantum mechanics.) We show that the decoherence functional fails to be diagonal, even upon inclusion of external ``pointer'' systems. Hence, probabilities for outcomes of these measurements are not defined. We conclude that the final state proposal does not offer a consistent alternative to the firewall hypothesis.

Source: Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields

DOI: 10.1103/physrevd.89.044038

Authors: Raphael Bousso, Douglas Stanford

Institutions: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University

Language: English

Topic: Black Holes and Theoretical Physics

Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W2137879641

FWCI: 1.463

Cites: 24

Cited by: 25

Related to: 10