We study the dynamics of a strongly-coupled quantum field theory in a cosmological spacetime using the holographic AdS/CFT correspondence. Specifically we consider a confining gauge theory in an expanding FRW universe and track the evolution of the s
tress-energy tensor during a period of expansion, varying the initial temperature as well as the rate and amplitude of the expansion. At strong coupling, particle production is inseparable from entropy production. As a result, we find significant qualitative differences from the weak coupling results: at strong coupling the system rapidly loses memory of its initial state as the amplitude is increased. Furthermore, in the regime where the Hubble parameter is parametrically smaller than the initial temperature, the dynamics is well modelled as a plasma evolving hydrodynamically towards equilibrium.
We propose a unitary toy model of black hole evaporation, in which the entanglement between the interior and exterior degrees of freedom vanishes at late times. Our model possesses the information-free property and satisfies the niceness conditions d
iscussed in the literature. A key feature of the model is that the Hilbert space of black hole internal states contains a vacuum state corresponding to the completely evaporated black hole, which can be reached from any initial state via the Hawking process. Our model suggests a novel quantum cosmological way in which information can get out of an evaporating black hole.
