Microscopic mechanism that makes Hawking radiation carry information out · revision history

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Accepted · first revision · record

Title

Microscopic mechanism that makes Hawking radiation carry information out

Plain

Calculations since 2019 show that the entropy of the radiation first rises and then falls back to zero (the Page curve), as quantum mechanics requires. Still missing is the physical account of how the information gets into the outgoing radiation, quantum by quantum.

Precise

For a black hole formed by collapse in a UV-complete theory, the fine-grained entropy $S_{\mathrm{rad}}(t)$ of the radiation follows the Page curve, which the island formula $S = \min \operatorname{ext} [A(X) c^{3}/(4 G \hbar) + S_{\mathrm{bulk}}]$ reproduces semiclassically via replica wormholes. Identify the Lorentzian, microscopic mechanism (which degrees of freedom, which couplings) that transfers information into the outgoing quanta, and show how the Euclidean replica-wormhole saddles follow from it. An answer is a dynamical model or derivation in which the late radiation state is computed and its correlations with the early radiation are traced to specific interactions.

Settled by

A derivation, in a theory with a known microscopic Hilbert space, of the radiation state that reproduces the island formula and identifies the channel carrying the information.

Kind

phenomenon

Answer type

mechanism

References

(empty)

Literature status

partially-resolved

Status note

The island formula reproduces the Page curve (2019-2020); the microscopic channel is not identified as of 2026.

Posed since

1976