Information loss in black holes
Phys. Rev. D 72, 084013 – Published 18 October, 2005
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.72.084013
Abstract
The question of whether information is lost in black holes is investigated using Euclidean path integrals. The formation and evaporation of black holes is regarded as a scattering problem with all measurements being made at infinity. This seems to be well formulated only in asymptotically AdS spacetimes. The path integral over metrics with trivial topology is unitary and information preserving. On the other hand, the path integral over metrics with nontrivial topologies leads to correlation functions that decay to zero. Thus at late times only the unitary information preserving path integrals over trivial topologies will contribute. Elementary quantum gravity interactions do not lose information or quantum coherence.
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The Work of Stephen Hawking in Physical Review
To mark the passing of Stephen Hawking, we gathered together his 55 papers in Physical Review D and Physical Review Letters. They probe the edges of space and time, from "Black holes and thermodynamics” to "Wave function of the Universe."