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arXiv · 0903.2290

Entropy creation inside black holes points to observer complementarity

Gavin Polhemus·Andrew J. S. Hamilton·Colin S. Wallace
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Abstract

Heating processes inside large black holes can produce tremendous amounts of entropy. Locality requires that this entropy adds on space-like surfaces, but the resulting entropy (10^10 times the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy in an example presented in the companion paper) exceeds the maximum entropy that can be accommodated by the black hole's degrees of freedom. Observer complementarity, which proposes a proliferation of non-local identifications inside the black hole, allows the entropy to be accommodated as long as individual observers inside the black hole see less than the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. In the specific model considered with huge entropy production, we show that individual observers do see less than the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy, offering strong support for observer complementarity.

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Gavin Polhemus, Andrew J. S. Hamilton, Colin S. Wallace. 2009-03-26. Entropy creation inside black holes points to observer complementarity. https://doi.org/10.1088/1126-6708/2009/09/016

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