Firewall (physics)

A black hole firewall is a hypothetical phenomenon where an observer that falls into an old black hole encounters high-energy quanta at (or near) the event horizon. The "firewall" phenomenon was proposed in 2012 by Ahmed Almheiri, Donald Marolf, Joseph Polchinski, and James Sully^[1] as a possible solution to an apparent inconsistency in black hole complementarity. The proposal is sometimes referred to as the AMPS firewall,^[2] an acronym for the names of the authors of the 2012 paper. The use of a firewall to resolve this inconsistency remains controversial as of 2013, with high-energy physicists divided as to the solution to the paradox.^[3]

The motivating paradox

According to quantum field theory in curved spacetime, a single emission of Hawking radiation involves two mutually entangled particles. The outgoing particle escapes and is emitted as a quantum of Hawking radiation; the infalling particle is swallowed by the black hole. Assume a black hole formed a finite time in the past and will fully evaporate away in some finite time in the future. Then, it will only emit a finite amount of information encoded within its Hawking radiation. Assume that at time , more than half of the information had already been emitted. According to widely accepted research by physicists like Don Page^[4][5] and Leonard Susskind, an outgoing particle emitted at time must be entangled with all the Hawking radiation the black hole has previously emitted. This creates a paradox: a principle called "monogamy of entanglement" requires that, like any quantum system, the outgoing particle cannot be fully entangled with two independent systems at the same time; yet here the outgoing particle appears to be entangled with both the infalling particle and, independently, with past Hawking radiation.^[3]

In order to resolve the paradox, physicists may eventually be forced to give up one of three time-tested theories: Einstein's equivalence principle, unitarity, or existing quantum field theory.^[6]

The "firewall" resolution to the paradox

Some scientists suggest that the entanglement must somehow get immediately broken between the infalling particle and the outgoing particle. Breaking this entanglement would release inconceivable amounts of energy, thus creating a searing "black hole firewall" at the black hole event horizon. This resolution requires a violation of Einstein's equivalence principle, which states that free-falling is indistinguishable from floating in empty space. This violation has been characterized as "outrageous"; one theorist has complained that "a firewall simply can't appear in empty space, any more than a brick wall can suddenly appear in an empty field and smack you in the face."^[3]

Non-firewall resolutions to the paradox

Some scientists suggest that there is in fact no entanglement between the emitted particle and previous Hawking radiation. This resolution would require black hole information loss, a controversial violation of unitarity.^[3]

Others, such as Steve Giddings, suggest modifying quantum field theory so that entanglement would be gradually lost as the outgoing and infalling particles separate, resulting in a more gradual release of energy inside the black hole, and consequently no firewall.^[3]

Juan Maldacena and Leonard Susskind have suggested in ER=EPR that the outgoing and infalling particles are somehow connected by wormholes, and therefore are not independent systems; however, as of 2013, this hypothesis is still a "work in progress".^[7][8]

The fuzzball picture resolves the dilemma by replacing the 'no-hair' vacuum with a stringy quantum state, thus explicitly coupling any outgoing Hawking radiation with the formation history of the black hole.^[9][10]

Stephen Hawking received widespread mainstream media coverage in January 2014 with an informal proposal^[11] to replace the event horizon of a black hole with an "apparent horizon" where infalling matter is suspended and then released; however, some scientists have expressed confusion about what precisely is being proposed and how the proposal would solve the paradox.^[12]

Characteristics

The firewall would exist at the black hole's event horizon, and would be invisible to observers outside the event horizon. Matter passing through the event horizon into the black hole would immediately be "burned to a crisp" by an arbitrarily hot "seething maelstrom of particles" at the firewall.^[3]

See also

• Black hole information paradox
• Black hole thermodynamics
• Magnetospheric eternally collapsing object

References

Black holes
Types	Schwarzschild Rotating Charged Virtual Binary
Size	Micro Extremal Electron Stellar Intermediate-mass Supermassive Quasar Active galactic nucleus Blazar Large quasar group
Formation	Stellar evolution Gravitational collapse Neutron star Related links Compact star Quark Exotic Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit White dwarf Related links Supernova Related links Hypernova Gamma-ray burst
Properties	Thermodynamics Schwarzschild radius M–sigma relation Event horizon Quasi-periodic oscillation Photon sphere Ergosphere Hawking radiation Penrose process Blandford–Znajek process Bondi accretion Spaghettification Gravitational lens
Models	Gravitational singularity Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems Primordial black hole Gravastar Dark star Dark-energy star Black star Eternally collapsing object Magnetospheric eternally collapsing object Fuzzball White hole Naked singularity Ring singularity Immirzi parameter Membrane paradigm Kugelblitz Wormhole Quasi-star
Issues	No-hair theorem Information paradox Cosmic censorship Alternative models Holographic principle Black hole complementarity firewall (physics) ER=EPR Final parsec problem
Metrics	Schwarzschild Kerr Reissner–Nordström Kerr–Newman
Lists	Black holes Most massive Quasars
Related	Timeline of black hole physics Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer Hypercompact stellar system Black hole starship