Measurements without probabilities in the final state proposal
Open accessAbstract
The black hole final state proposal reconciles the infalling vacuum with the unitarity of the Hawking radiation, but only for some experiments. We study experiments that first verify the exterior, then the interior purification of the same Hawking particle. (This is the same protocol that renders the firewall paradox operationally meaningful in standard quantum mechanics.) We show that the decoherence functional fails to be diagonal, even upon inclusion of external ``pointer'' systems. Hence, probabilities for outcomes of these measurements are not defined. We conclude that the final state proposal does not offer a consistent alternative to the firewall hypothesis.
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It is well known that final state projection models can lead to issues with describing measurements done by an observer falling into the black hole.
“It is well known that final state projection models can lead to issues with describing measurements done by an observer falling into the black hole [74-76].”
From Entanglement wedge reconstruction and the information paradox (2020) · cites this paper as [75]
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- Authors
- Bousso, R., & Stanford, D.
- Affiliations
- Stanford University (US)
- ORCID
- Stanford, Douglas
- Venue
- Physical Review D
- Publisher
- American Physical Society (APS)
- Published
- 2014-02-24
- Volume
- 89
- Issue
- 4
- ISSN
- 0556-2821 (ISSN-L)
- 1550-7998
- 1550-2368
- OpenAlex
- W2137879641
- Cited by
- 25
- References
- 24
- Citations by year
- 2025: 3 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 5
- FWCI
- 1.47
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- arxiv.org
- Locations
- Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Nuclear and High Energy Physics › Black Holes and Theoretical Physics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Quantum Mechanics and Applications
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories
- Keywords
- black hole complementarity, Hawking radiation, unitarity, firewall paradox, decoherence functional, black hole interior
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