Abstract
The AMPS argument for black hole firewalls seems to arise not only from the assumption of local effective field theory outside the stretched horizon but also from an overcounting of internal black hole states that include states that are singular in the past. Here I propose to exclude such singular states by Extreme Cosmic Censorship (the conjectured principle that the universe is entirely nonsingular, except for transient singularities inside black and/or white holes). I argue that the remaining set of nonsingular realistic states do not have firewalls but yet preserve information in Hawking radiation from black holes that form from nonsingular initial states.
Highlights
Almheiri, Marolf, Polchinski, and Sully (AMPS) [1] have given a provocative argument that suggests that an “infalling observer burns up at the horizon” of a sufficiently old black hole, so that the horizon becomes what they called a “firewall.” A brief form of the argument is the following: The assumptions of unitary evolution and of local effective field theory outside the stretched horizon suggest that at late times the Hawking radiation is maximally entangled with what is just outside the remaining black hole
I shall suggest excluding them by what I call Extreme Cosmic Censorship: The universe is entirely nonsingular
I further argue that within the remaining allowed ‘realistic’ quantum states, there are no firewalls, and the black hole information is preserved in the Hawking radiation of its evaporation, so that there can still be nearly maximal entanglement between an old black hole and the radiation it has already emitted.[1]
Summary
Marolf, Polchinski, and Sully (AMPS) [1] have given a provocative argument that suggests that an “infalling observer burns up at the horizon” of a sufficiently old black hole, so that the horizon becomes what they called a “firewall.” A brief form of the argument is the following: The assumptions of unitary evolution and of local effective field theory outside the stretched horizon suggest that at late times the Hawking radiation is maximally entangled with what is just outside the remaining black hole.
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