Towards a Full Quantum Theory of Black Holes

Abstract

This review gives an introduction to various attempts to understand the quantum nature of black holes. The first part focuses on thermodynamics of black holes, Hawking radiation, and the interpretation of entropy. The second part is devoted to the detailed treatment of black holes within canonical quantum gravity. The last part adds a brief discussion of black holes in string theory and quantum cosmology.Comment: 32 pages, needs macro lamuphys.sty, additional comments and references added, to appear in ``Black Holes: Theory and Observation'' (Springer 1998

Is There an Information-Loss Problem for Black Holes?

“…To understand black-hole entropy as an entanglement entropy has been tried before, see e.g. [26] and the references therein. A special example is induced gravity where (2) was recovered in the presence of non-minimally coupled fields [27].…”

Hawking radiation from decoherence

“…One might think, however, that S BH could also be understood along these lines. For this purpose one would need the inclusion of the correct gravitational wavefunction, at least within the semiclassical approximation (see, e.g., [12] for some attempts in this direction). The universal nature of S BH would then arise due to the decohering influence of environmental degrees of freedom on this wavefunction.…”