Correlation, entropy, and information transfer in black hole radiation

Abstract

Since the discovery of Hawking radiation, its consistency with quantum theory has been widely questioned. In the widely described picture, irrespective of what initial state a black hole starts with before collapsing, it eventually evolves into a thermal state of Hawking radiations after the black hole is exhausted. This scenario violates the principle of unitarity as required for quantum mechanics and leads to the acclaimed “information loss paradox”. This paradox has become an obstacle or a reversed touchstone for any possible theory to unify the gravity and quantum mechanics. Based on the results from Hawking radiation as tunneling, we recently show that Hawking radiations can carry off all information about the collapsed matter in a black hole. After discovering the existence of information-carrying correlation, we show in great detail that entropy is conserved for Hawking radiation based on standard probability theory and statistics. We claim that information previously considered lost remains hidden inside Hawking radiation. More specifically, it is encoded into correlations between Hawking radiations. Our study thus establishes harmony between Hawking radiation and the unitarity of quantum mechanics, which establishes the basis for a significant milestone toward resolving the long-standing information loss paradox. The paper provides a brief review of the exciting development on Hawking radiation. In addition to summarize our own work on this subject, we compare and address other related studies.