Quantum information in Hawking radiation


الملخص بالإنكليزية

In 1974 Steven Hawking showed that black holes emit thermal radiation, which eventually causes them to evaporate. The problem of the fate of information in this process is known as the black hole information paradox. It inspired a plethora of theoretical models which, for the most part, assume either a fundamental loss of information or some form of quantum gravity. At variance to the main trends, a conservative approach assuming information retrieval in quantum correlation between Hawking particles was proposed and recently developed within qubit toy-models. Here we leverage modern quantum information to incarnate this idea in a realistic model of quantised radiation. To this end we employ the formalism of quantum Gaussian states together with the continuous-variables version of the quantum marginal problem. Using a rigorous solution to the latter we show that the thermality of all Hawking particles is consistent with a global pure state of the radiation. Surprisingly, we find out that the radiation of an astrophysical black hole can be thermal until the very last particle. In contrast, the thermality of Hawking radiation originating from a microscopic black hole -- which is expected to evaporate through several quanta -- is not excluded, though there are constraints on modes frequencies. Our result support the conservative resolution to the black hole information paradox. Furthermore, it suggests a systematic programme for probing the global state of Hawking radiation.

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