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Phys. Rev. D 72, 084013 (2005) [4 pages]

Information loss in black holes

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S. W. Hawking
DAMTP, Center for Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge CB3 0WA, United Kingdom

Received 22 August 2005; published 18 October 2005

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.

© 2005 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.72.084013
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevD.72.084013
PACS:
04.70.Dy