REVIEW ARTICLE

The paradox of quantum black holes

The conflict between the principles of quantum mechanics and those of general relativity reached
crisis proportions with the discovery that black holes have a heat content, or entropy. But efforts
to solve the problem have since led to profound and revolutionary new insights into the quantum
structure of space–time. In this review, I will explain not only the conflict but also the surprising ideas
that can resolve the apparent inconsistencies between the two most fundamental theories of physics.

LEONARD SUSSKIND taken the trouble to analyse the space–time geometry

of a horizon. Nevertheless, they represent a peculiar
is in the department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, tension in the two descriptions that explodes into
California 94305-4060, USA. a much more serious confusion when quantum
e-mail: susskind@stanford.edu mechanics is added to the brew.

Paradoxes — apparent inconsistencies between two THE CLASSICAL BLACK HOLE

fundamental principles — provide one of the great
engines that drive new scientific ideas. The story
is well known of how the principles of classical
mechanics led to the intolerable infinite heat content
of black-body radiation, and how Max Planck and
Albert Einstein resolved the dilemma with the
quantum hypothesis. Even better known is how
Einstein turned the paradox of the constant speed
of light into a fundamental new theory of space and
time. Has there been a conceptual paradox of equal
importance to physics in more recent times? I believe
there has, and like its predecessors, it is changing the
foundations of physics.
Black holes have always been paradoxical objects,
even before their quantum behaviour was considered.
For example, from the perspective of an observer who
remains outside the black hole, any object that falls
towards the horizon takes an infinite time to reach it
— in other words, according to all observations done
from the outside, nothing ever crosses into the interior
of the black hole. But from the point of view of a freely
falling observer, there is no obstruction to crossing the
horizon. Moreover the crossing happens after a finite
amount of the infalling observer’s (proper) time.
Another peculiarity: the observer outside the
black hole sees the infalling observer slow down
as she asymptotically approaches the horizon. This
slowdown includes the freely falling observer’s
clocks as well as her internal metabolism and her
brain functions. Does the infalling observer see the
outside observer speed up? Not at all, the infalling
observer sees nothing out of the ordinary as she
passes the horizon — at least until she approaches
the singularity.
These apparent paradoxes of classical
(non-quantum) motion are surprising to the beginner
but they are well understood by anyone who has
We begin with the classical black-hole solution of
Einstein’s field equations that was discovered by
Karl Schwarzschild in 1915, for a black hole with mass
M and zero angular momentum. (Spinning black
holes also exist but almost all of the most important
questions are already present in the non-rotating
Schwarzschild case, so I will assume that black holes,
as well as the objects that collapse to form them,
have zero total angular momentum.) The solution,
expressed as a space–time metric, is given by
ds2 = –(1–2MG/r)/dt2 + (1–2MG/r)–1dr2 + r2d/Ω2.
(1)
Here, and throughout the rest of the paper, I have set the
speed of light to unity; G is the gravitational constant.
The horizon of the black hole is at the radial
position r = RS, the Schwarzschild radius: RS = 2MG.
The precise definition of the horizon is that it
separates the world into two regions. The exterior of
the horizon (r > RS) consists of points from which
light rays can escape to infinity. By contrast, signals
originating from r < RS cannot escape. All light-like
and time-like trajectories from this region eventually
terminate at the black hole singularity, r = 0.
Although the function (1–2MG/r)–1 appearing
in equation (1) has a singularity at the horizon
(r = 2MG), the geometry is completely smooth. An
infalling observer feels nothing special at r = RS: no
large curvature, no large tidal forces, or any other
signal of the horizon-crossing. The singularity
is removable by a change of coordinates. But the
point r = 0 is more dangerous. Here, the space–time
curvature and the tidal forces exerted on material
objects become infinite. Thus r = 0 is known as the
black-hole singularity.

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REVIEW ARTICLE
Equation (1) reveals another peculiarity in the
interior of the horizon: the function (1–2MG/r)–1
changes sign, implying that behind the horizon the
coordinate t becomes space-like, whereas the radial
coordinate r becomes time-like. This interchange of
space-like and time-like means that the singularity
is space-like. In other words the singularity is not a
place — the singularity is a time. One approaches
the singularity, not as one would approach a
location in space, but as one would approach the
end of the world.
One more point about the Schwarzschild
black-hole solution is worth noting. The
Schwarzschild solution is completely static, but
real black holes are formed by dynamical processes
ONE CONSEQUENCE CAME AS A TOTAL SURPRISE
WHEN HAWKING ANNOUNCED IT: BLACK HOLES
IN EMPTY SPACE EVAPORATE.
such as the gravitational collapse of a star. During
and shortly after the collapse, the solution may
oscillate and exhibit waves on the horizon, but the
black hole very quickly settles down to the unique,
static, Schwarzschild geometry. To be a little more
precise, the final black hole is characterized by
its mass and angular momentum; otherwise it
is unique. This uniqueness is often described by
saying that black holes ‘have no hair’. They are
smooth featureless spherical objects with perfectly
round horizons.
BEKENSTEIN ENTROPY AND HAWKING TEMPERATURE
The first indication that quantum mechanics added
something new to the black-hole story was the
1972 discovery by Jacob Bekenstein1,2 that black
holes have a heat content. Bekenstein argued that
unless black holes possess entropy, the second law
of thermodynamics can be violated. The argument
is simple. Imagine a quantity of hot gas or thermal
radiation falling into a black hole: considered
from the viewpoint of the external observer,
the entropy of the gas disappears, leaving only a
featureless black hole; thus, the observer sees an
effective decrease of entropy — a violation of the
second law. The only way to rescue the situation is
to assume that the black hole has an entropy that
increases when it absorbs the energy of the gas.
This fits well with the fact that the observer never
sees the gas fall through the horizon, but it seems
to conflict with the absolute uniqueness of the
black-hole solution.
Bekenstein estimated the entropy of the black hole
as follows: consider increasing the entropy of the black
hole by the minimal amount — a single bit (entropy,
like information, is measured in bits). This can be
done by throwing a single long-wavelength photon
into the black hole. However, the wavelength cannot
be arbitrarily long. The horizon is a perfect absorber
for short wavelengths but for wavelengths much
longer than the Schwarzschild radius, the horizon is a
reflector3. It follows that the smallest energy that can
be absorbed is of order
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δM = Emin = ħ = ħ .
RS 2MG
This corresponds to an increase of entropy
approximately equal to a single bit. Thus we can
write an approximate equation for the entropy S,
dM ~ ħ ,
dS MG
which can be integrated to give
M2G RS2 .
S~ ~ (2)
ħ ħG
Thus Bekenstein announced a new law of physics:
black holes not only have entropy but the entropy is
proportional to the area of the horizon measured in
Planck units (units in which G = ħ = c = 1).
Bekenstein was unable to deduce the precise
coefficient in equation (2), but by studying
quantum field theory in the black-hole background,
Stephen Hawking4,5 was soon able to derive a precise
formula, for horizon area A: S = A/4Għ; or in terms
of the mass,
S = 4πG M2 . (3)
ħ
The fact that the entropy is in some way related to
the horizon, and not the interior of the black hole
can be understood from the fact that (from the
viewpoint of the outside observer) no matter ever
crosses the horizon. Even the matter that originally
formed the black hole is seen from outside as
eternally approaching, but never quite crossing, the
horizon. In retrospect, what is surprising is not so
much that the black hole has entropy but that its
entropy is not infinite. Notice that in equation (3) the
factor of Planck’s constant is in the denominator: the
role of quantum mechanics is to limit the amount of
entropy that a black hole can absorb.
Entropy was just the start. Hawking soon
realized a profound consequence of Bekenstein’s
conjecture. Entropy means heat, heat means
temperature, and temperature means thermal
radiation. All objects with non-zero temperature
emit black-body radiation and black holes are no
exception4,5. Although Hawking’s argument for
the existence of a finite temperature was based
on quantum field theory, the point is a textbook
thermodynamic fact: entropy and energy are related
by the first law of thermodynamics, dE = TdS. In
axiomatic thermodynamics, this is often taken
to be the definition of temperature. Taken with
equation (3), we find that the Hawking temperature
of a Schwarzschild black hole of mass M is given by
TH = ħ = ħ .
(4)
8πMG 4πRS
The existence of entropy and temperature for a
black hole was a major discovery and is bound to
govern our future thinking about the foundations of
physics. For now, let me explain one consequence that
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came as a total surprise when Hawking announced it:
black holes in empty space evaporate. All objects with
finite temperature radiate black-body radiation with
a rate that depends on their area and temperature;
the luminosity of a black body is of order AT4. The
implication is that the black hole will radiate away
its mass in the form of black-body radiation until it
disappears. Because the temperature is inverse to the
mass, as the black hole evaporates its temperature
increases until it reaches some enormous value
and the black hole disappears in a final explosion.
(However, for most of its life an ordinary astronomical
black hole is extremely cold: a solar-mass black hole
has a temperature of about 10−8 degrees). It is worth
noting that the factor of ħ in equation (4) is in the
numerator — the temperature is a quantum effect.
From now on, I will set ħ equal to 1.
To understand the essential question raised by
Bekenstein’s work, consider a bathtub full of warm
water. For the practical purposes of the bather,
the relevant properties of the water are its volume
and temperature. These variables could be said to
describe the macroscopic or thermodynamic state of
the system. But there is much more to the detailed
microscopic description. Classically, the microstate
consists of the location and velocity of every atom.
The quantum state, which is more relevant for our
purposes, is described in terms of an enormously
dense but discrete collection of energy eigenstates.
How much detailed information are we ignoring
when we specify only the macroscopic state of the tub
of water? The answer is the entropy.
Is there a quantum microstructure to the horizon
of a black hole that went unnoticed because the usual
classical description of gravity is too coarse-grained,
Box 1: Entropy and information
Entropy is closely related to the concept of
information. Entropy, S, is a measure of the
information that, in principle, would be available if
one knew the microscopic state of a system (whether
bathtub or black hole), but which, in practice, is
unavailable because our description is too coarse.
The existence of a finite entropy for a
macroscopic system implies the existence of some
kind of discrete microscopic degrees of freedom
underlying the thermodynamic properties of the
system. It also gives an estimate of the number of
such degrees of freedom, but, in itself, it doesn’t tell
us what those degrees of freedom are. The most
direct information that the entropy provides is
an estimate of the density of states — that is, the
number of discrete energy levels per unit energy.
The level density is of order eS.
Entropy and information, I, are often defined
to be the negative of one another: I = −S. A better
definition might have been that information is
the difference between the maximum possible
entropy of a system (the entropy when nothing at
all is known) and the actual entropy: I = Smax − S.
The trouble is that for most ordinary systems the
maximum entropy is infinite.
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and, if so, what is it? Or, as Hawking believed, is there
a new kind of intrinsic gravitational entropy that has
nothing to do with microscopic degrees of freedom,
but with information loss (Box 1)? Do the usual
rules of quantum mechanics and information theory
hold for a black hole? Or are there new rules when
quantum mechanics meets gravity?
THE PROPERTIES OF HORIZONS
From the outside, the horizon of a black hole would
seem to have significant structure. For example, it
reflects very-low-frequency radiation, suggesting
that it behaves like a conducting surface — the study
of electrodynamics in a black-hole background
confirms that this is the case3,6. All electromagnetic
experiments done from outside the black hole
would indicate that the horizon has an electrical
surface conductivity of 377 ohms and that electric
currents can flow along the horizon and dissipate
energy. In addition, the horizon has viscosity3. If
a gravitating object flies past a black hole it will
perturb the horizon and create surface waves. These
surface waves dissipate their energy exactly as if
the horizon were the surface of a viscous fluid. The
fact that the black hole has an entropy proportional
to the horizon area, suggests that the excitation of
microscopic degrees of freedom is responsible for
the dissipative properties of the horizon.
The horizon also has a very high temperature. The
very small Hawking temperature of a large black hole
is the temperature of the black hole seen from very
far away. But in a gravitational field, the local proper
temperature T(x) — the actual physical temperature
recorded by a standard thermometer — is not
The detailed evolution equations of quantum
mechanics require information to be conserved:
the evolution of an isolated system always takes
pure states into pure states. But if one looks only
at a subsystem, then typically information can be
lost. The mechanism is quantum entanglement.
Whenever two systems become entangled, the
entropy of either system increases. One can also
say that the amount of information contained in
a subsystem decreases. However a basic theorem
of quantum mechanics limits the amount of
information a subsystem can lose by entanglement.
For a system consisting of two subsystems, A and B,
the entanglement entropies are the same.
To see how this fact limits loss of
information56, suppose that A is a finite system
with a maximum possible entropy. Even if B
is a much larger system, the maximum loss of
information that B can suffer is the maximum
entropy of A. This, of course, is true if the
conventional principles of quantum mechanics
are not violated by new phenomena. In fact it was
precisely this principle that was questioned by
Hawking when he formulated what has come to be
known as the ‘information paradox’57.
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constant in space. It is related to a constant ‘coordinate
temperature’, Tc, by T(x) = Tc/√g00, where g00 is
the time–time component of the metric. Near
the horizon, where g00 tends to zero, the proper
temperature diverges. It is easy to see that in the
near-horizon-region the proper temperature varies
like the inverse proper distance from the horizon7:
T ~ 1/2πρ . (5)
All of this — the existence of dissipative properties,
entropy and temperature — suggest the existence of a
microscopic set of degrees of freedom, distributed over
the horizon, that can absorb and emit information like
any other complex system. But it is not that simple.
To understand why the properties of horizons
lead to contentious issues, one has only to consider
the situation from the viewpoint of the freely falling
HAWKING’S CONCLUSION WAS THAT INFORMATION
IS IRRETRIEVABLY LOST.
observer. According to the equivalence principle,
the only effects felt by an observer in free fall are
due to tidal forces — the distorting forces caused by
variations of the gravitational field. In the general
theory of relativity, tidal forces are measured by the
components of the curvature tensor. These, of course,
are frame-dependent, but in the frame of a typical
falling observer the curvature components at the
horizon are of order
1 1 .
R~ ~
(MG)2 RS2
Thus, for a very large black hole, the equivalence
principle says that a falling observer will detect
nothing but empty space at the horizon. In
particular, she will encounter no high temperatures,
electrical conductors or viscous fluids, and no
collection of microscopic degrees of freedom like
those of the atoms in a tub full of warm water.
This is the reason that Hawking and other
relativists were driven to the conclusion that the
entropy of a black hole must be something completely
THE INFORMATION MAY BE SCRAMBLED BUT
NOT LOST — AT LEAST, THAT IS WHAT THE
BASIC PRINCIPLES OF QUANTUM MECHANICS
WOULD SAY.
new that has no explanation in an underlying
microstructure. Moreover, the non-existence of
such degrees of freedom means that there is nothing
to absorb and re-emit the information that may
fall to the horizon. Hawking’s conclusion was that
information is irretrievably lost.
The problem with this view is that it violates
the laws of entropy and information from the
viewpoint of an observer outside the black hole.
Imagine that we have a black hole in the laboratory,
whose environment we can control. The black hole
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naturally tends to evaporate, so to keep it from
disappearing, we continuously feed it energy, at
just the rate that it evaporates, in the form of a laser
beam of coherent radiation. The laser beam could be
modulated to carry information, say in the form of
Morse code. The information goes in, but according
to Hawking, only absolutely featureless thermal
radiation comes out. With time, more and more
information is lost to the black hole and the entropy
(carried by the Hawking radiation) of the outside
world indefinitely increases. But the information
lost by entanglement with the black hole may be no
bigger than the entropy of the black hole, and this
remains constant. The black hole cannot absorb
infinite quantities of information. It can only be
entangled with the outside world (the Hawking
radiation) to a limited degree. The Hawking
radiation must carry off all but a finite amount of
the information that falls in. The information may
be scrambled but not lost — at least, that is what the
basic principles of quantum mechanics would say.
In summary, the equivalence principle seems
to imply that information carried by an infalling
observer passes the horizon and can’t escape without
violating causality. On the other hand, the principles
of quantum mechanics (as applied to an external
observer) demand that information not be lost, it
must be emitted in the evaporation products. These
are the horns of the dilemma that theorists have
wrestled with for more than two decades8–10.
THE QUANTUM SOLUTION
Today, there is some consensus that black holes do
not violate the operational principles of conventional
quantum mechanics. By this I mean that the
formation and evaporation of a black hole can be
described by the same kind of unitary time evolution
that describes conventional systems11. It is also
thought that black holes, having finite entropy, also
have a finite capacity to absorb information: if one
continues to feed a black hole, either it must grow or
give back the absorbed information in the evaporation
products. But radical new ideas about causality and
the structure of space–time were required to reconcile
this view with the equivalence principle.
There was an early hint that this reconciliation
would involve unknown physics at energies far
beyond the Planck scale. The point was repeatedly
emphasized by ‘t Hooft but largely ignored10–15.
Imagine following a particle as it falls towards the
horizon. In the frame of a stationary observer outside
the black hole, the momentum of the falling particle
increases as it falls. An elementary calculation shows
that the radial momentum increases like
p = p0et/4MG .
On the other hand, the time that it takes for the black
hole to radiate a significant fraction of its energy is of
order M3G2, at which time the infalling particle has a
2
stupendous amount of momentum p ~ ecM G, with c
being a constant of order unity. In other words, some
of the outgoing photons have encountered an ingoing
particle carrying exponentially high energy, way above
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the Planck scale. But, traditionally, relativists have
approached the problems of Hawking radiation using
conventional (free) quantum field theory. Evidently,
the paradox of black holes and information could
not be addressed until one had a serious theory of
‘transplanckian’ physics.
In fact, four new ideas, all of them related,
have been fitted together to give us a fairly clear
outline of the solution to the paradox of quantum
black holes. They are: black-hole complementarity,
the holographic principle, the ultraviolet–infrared
connection and — the topic with which I’ll
begin — the counting of black-hole microstates.

COUNTING MICROSTATES OF BLACK HOLES

Let’s start with the problem that Bekenstein’s entropy
originally raised: are there microscopic degrees of
freedom that can account for the entropy of black
holes? If so what are they, and how do we count
them? An idea that has proved fruitful is that black
holes are the natural extrapolation of the spectrum of
elementary particles to extremely high mass10. This
idea was first expressed by ‘t Hooft who speculated
that the sparse energy spectrum of ordinary
elementary particles will become increasingly dense
as the energy is increased. As the Planck energy is
exceeded, the spectrum becomes so dense that it can
best be studied statistically and thermodynamically.
This is where string theory made its appearance in
black-hole physics.
Even before Bekenstein’s entropy conjecture,
string theory was being studied as a possible quantum
theory of gravity that contained a dense spectrum
of excited particle states. Indeed, the spectrum of
these excited particles is so rich that it was common
to study it by the methods of statistical mechanics
and thermodynamics16–19. Nevertheless, it took about
twenty years to make the connection between the
statistical properties of strings and black holes20.
Several versions of string theory exist — bosonic
string theory, two type-I string theories, two
type-II theories and heterotic theory, among the
possibilities. In all of these versions, gravitating
matter is described by general relativity. As a
consequence, string theories all contain black
holes. If the theory is consistent it must contain
an explanation of microstates that make up the
Bekenstein entropy. Furthermore, as the entropy
formula of equation (3) is universal, all of the various
string theories must give the same answer.
Let’s consider a highly excited string in its rest
frame. A given string-theory setup (I will assume
four space–time dimensions but the principles are
easily extendible to other number of dimensions) is
characterized by a number of constants, but, for our
purposes, only two are important: one dimensionless
string coupling constant g and a length scale ls,
called the string scale. The string scale is the basic
dimensional length scale in the theory and all other
scales derive from it. For example, the Planck length lP,
or equivalently the gravitational constant G, is related
to these by G ≡ lP2 = g2ls2.
The quantization of free strings (here ‘free’ means
g = 0) is an exact science. The energy eigenstates,
NASA/NRAO/ESA
NGC 4696, an elliptical galaxy in the Centaurus cluster, whose bright core is likely to
conceal a black hole.
eigenvalues and the density of states can be exactly
computed. One finds from such calculations17–19 that
the level density grows exponentially with mass, from
which it follows that the entropy of a highly excited
string is proportional to its mass. The constant of
proportionality depends on the details of the setup
(for example, the compactification scheme of extra
dimensions, and so on). Without getting into the
technical details, the result can be simply understood.
The typical highly excited string is a random-walking
tangle that is best described statistically, and a simple
way to do so is to picture the string as living on a
lattice with spacing ls. In this approximation, the
string is composed of a series of connected lattice
links. In all versions of string theory, the mass per
unit length is a fixed constant of order 1/ls. Thus if the
mass of the string is M, it can be pictured as being
composed of Mls links.
Next, consider the entropy of the string. As the
string random-walks through the lattice, at each site
a number of possibilities exist: the string can proceed
straight ahead; it can backtrack over the previous
link; or it can turn in any of a few ways. It is evident
RADICAL NEW IDEAS ABOUT CAUSALITY AND THE
STRUCTURE OF SPACE–TIME WERE REQUIRED.
that the number of states of the random string will be
exponential in the number of links. Thus it follows
that the entropy will be proportional to the number
of links:
S = cMls , (6)
where c is a numerical constant that depends on
the detailed string-theory setup. As in the case of
black holes, if a string has both energy (mass) and

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entropy, it also has a temperature which, according
to thermodynamics, is given by
dM 1 .
T= = (7)
dS c into something more tractable. The second fact is
In fact, these two equations are asymptotic
formulas that apply in the limit of long strings
— the large-mass limit. Equation (7) tells us that
a highly excited string asymptotically approaches
a particular temperature, T → 1/c, called the
Hagedorn temperature16.
So far, we see that highly excited strings and black
holes share a thermal description, but little else. In
particular, we see no sign that the entropy grows
quadratically with M, as in equation (3); instead it
grows more modestly. The problem is that we have
not taken into account the effects of gravity on the
string. Equation (7) was derived only in the limit
g = 0 (or G = 0), which means the limit in which
gravity has been switched off. But the effects of
gravity on a massive system depend on the mass as
well as on G. No matter how small the gravitational
coupling, a sufficiently excited string will be modified
by its own self-gravity. In particular one expects the
negative gravitational potential energy to lower the
mass of any given state. This effect obviously must
modify equation (6). Fortunately, it does so in a way
that can be computed.
There are two facts that underlie all string-
theoretic calculations of black-hole entropy. The
first is a very basic principle of quantum mechanics
called the adiabatic theorem. The adiabatic theorem
applies to any finite-volume system when a control
parameter is slowly adiabatically varied. What it says
is that the number of quantum states in an ensemble
is unchanged as the control parameter is varied.
Box 2: Supersymmetry
Supersymmetry describes a physical symmetry
that may exist between two classes of particle,
bosons and fermions: each boson has a
fermionic superpartner, and each fermion a
bosonic superpartner. A point that should
be emphasized is that although the results
discussed in this review are rigorous exact
consequences of string theory, they apply only
to idealized supersymmetric theories. More than
that, the precise tests apply to supersymmetric
configurations in supersymmetric theories.
Consider the more familiar case of ordinary
rotation symmetry. Experience has taught us
that the laws of physics are rotationally invariant.
But individual configurations may or may not
be rotationally symmetric. For example, in
the realm of atomic physics, only atoms with
vanishing angular momentum are rotationally
symmetric. In the same way, a string-theory setup
may lead to supersymmetric laws (one would
say that the background is supersymmetric) but
individual objects in that theory are typically
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As a consequence, the entropy of the ensemble is
unchanged. Thus, one can sometimes compute the
entropy of a complicated, strongly coupled system by
varying a control parameter until the system evolves
specific to string theory: the coupling constant g is
really the value of a dynamical field (the dilaton field)
and can be varied. This means that g can be used as a
control parameter.
These two facts allow us to pursue the following
strategy20–23. Begin with a black hole of mass M0
in a string-theory setup with coupling constant g0.
Our goal is to compute the entropy S(M0, g0) and
compare it with the Bekenstein entropy. To do that,
we allow the control parameter g to slowly decrease.
By the time g reaches zero, the system must have
evolved into an object that exists in free string
theory — in other words, it must evolve into a free,
highly excited string. Although the direct counting
of the quantum states of a black hole is an obscure
problem, we have reduced it to the counting of free-
string quantum states and we can use equation (6).
The only problem with the strategy is that, during
the adiabatic evolution, energy, unlike entropy, is
not conserved. Thus, at the end of the evolution, the
mass of the black hole will have changed. Unless we
can track that change, we will not know what mass to
use in equation (6).
In string theory, there are different kinds of black
holes, characterized by charge quantum numbers,
dimensionality of space, angular momentum, and
compactification details. I will take the reader
through the case of the Schwarzschild black hole in
3+1 dimensions. We begin with equation (3) written
in the form
S = 4πg2ls2M 2,
not supersymmetric. Only very special objects,
called BPS (Bogomol’nyi–Prasad–Sommerfeld)
configurations, are supersymmetric.
Supersymmetry provides enormous
mathematical power, but mostly when it is applied to
supersymmetric configurations in supersymmetric
backgrounds. In the context of black holes, this is
rather limiting. Any theory that contains Einstein
gravity, whether supersymmetric or not, will have
Schwarzschild black holes. But Schwarzschild black
holes are not supersymmetric configurations, even
in supersymmetric theories. For this reason, an
exact counting of the microstates of Schwarzschild
black holes (computing the numerical coefficient
in the area law) has not yet been possible in string
theory. But fortunately, there is a special subclass
of black holes, so-called extremal BPS black holes,
that preserve a degree of supersymmetry such that
exact counting of their microstates is possible.
Although the supersymmetric mathematical aspects
are downplayed in the main text, the rigour of the
conclusions is wholly dependent on supersymmetry.
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where we have replaced the gravitational constant
by string theory parameters (G ≡ g2ls2). What this
equation tells us, is that the adiabatic trajectories in
the (M, g) plane are given by hyperbolas:
Mg = constant = M0 g0 .
As g is decreased, gravity will become unimportant
at some point and the system will make a
transition to a weakly coupled string. The value of
g at which this happens corresponds to the point
at which the Schwarzschild radius becomes about
equal to the string scale ls. Thus the transition point
lies on the curve
2MG = ls ,
or
2Mg2ls = 1 .
The strategy is straightforward: starting at the point
(M0, g0), follow the curve defined by equation (8),
until it intersects equation (9). At that point, the
black hole has evolved to a weakly coupled string
whose entropy can be read off, using equation (6):
S = 2cM02G0 .
Apart from the numerical constant, this agrees with
the Bekenstein entropy of equation (3).
The method is subject to some numerical
uncertainty because tracking the system through
the difficult region where it is making the transition
from black hole to string is not exact. But the
procedure does reproduce the central fact of black-
hole physics: the entropy is equal to a numerical
constant times the horizon area measured in
Planck units. The same arguments have been
successfully applied to a wide variety of charged
and neutral black holes in all dimensions22,24–26, and
in each case the counting of microstates of strings
agrees with the Bekenstein–Hawking value up to a
numerical constant.
Supersymmetric string theory, however, has
provided black holes whose thermal behaviour
is completely computable, thanks to the special
simplifications of supersymmetry (Box 2). These
are the extremal charged black holes that have the
minimum possible mass for a given gauge charge.
Gauge charges, such as electric and magnetic
(monopole) charge, cannot disappear. Gauge
invariance requires them to be exactly conserved. It
follows that a charged black hole cannot completely
evaporate. For every non-zero value of the charge,
there is a minimum ground-state mass, proportional
to the charge, at which the Hawking temperature
vanishes. Such black holes are called extremal. What
is most interesting is that although their temperature
is zero, their horizon area is not. In other words,
they have non-zero ground-state entropy, which
is unusual. Most conventional quantum systems
have unique ground states. But there is no law of
quantum mechanics that says a ground state cannot
be degenerate. If the ground state is degenerate, say
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with N degenerate eigenvectors, then the ground state
entropy is logN.
Let’s apply the adiabatic argument to such black
holes. What we need to know is how the mass of
the extremal system varies as we allow the control
(8)
EXTRAPOLATE THE BLACK HOLE TO ZERO
COUPLING CONSTANT, THE SYSTEM EVOLVES TO A
COLLECTION OF FREE OPEN STRINGS ATTACHED
TO D-BRANES...
parameter g to tend to zero — we are in luck, the
mass doesn’t vary at all. For a neutral black hole, the
negative gravitational energy of the system obviously
decreases (in magnitude) as the gravitational
coupling decreases. But, in the extremal case, a
miracle happens: the negative gravitational energy is
exactly opposite to the positive electrostatic energy
(9) and the mass is completely independent of the
coupling constant. Thus, the mass doesn’t vary as we
go through the problematic transition from black
hole to free string. The black-hole entropy should be
easy to calculate.
The first attempt to compute the entropy of an
extremal black hole by counting string states was
made by Ashoke Sen27–29. Comparing the degeneracy
of ground states he computed with the Bekenstein
entropy was somewhat problematic, because the
classical horizon area vanishes. As Sen realized at the
time, string-theory corrections to general relativity
correct this result and yield a non-vanishing area
but he was only able to estimate these corrections.
However, the estimated entropy agreed, to within
a numerical factor, with the string-theory state-
counting. The goal of precisely computing the
numerical coefficient had yet to be achieved. The
problem was that no one knew how to build an
extremal black hole with a non-zero classical area
using the theoretical tools then available.
The discovery of the relevance of ‘D-branes’ to
string theory, by Joseph Polchinski30, was the key
to extremal black holes with macroscopic area. The
mathematical rules of string theory don’t allow
strings to just end in empty space. D-branes are
objects — they can be points, lines, surfaces and,
in higher dimensions, hypersurfaces — that allow
strings to terminate. Mathematical consistency of
the theory requires the endpoints of strings to be all
attached to D-branes. The first exact calculation of
…AGREEMENT WITH THE BEKENSTEIN–HAWKING
EXPRESSION WAS THE RESULT, A DRAMATIC
CULMINATION OF THE ATTEMPTS TO EXPLAIN
BLACK-HOLE ENTROPY BY COUNTING THE
MICROSTATES OF STRINGS.
both the area and statistical entropy of a black hole,
built out of strings and D-branes, was carried out by
Andrew Strominger and Cumrun Vafa31. Once again
the method was the same — extrapolate the black hole
to zero coupling constant. Then, in this free-string
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limit, the system evolves to a collection of free, open
strings attached to D-branes, for which Strominger
and Vafa were able to compute the degeneracy of
the ground state. They were also able to solve the
gravitational field equations for a black hole with the
same quantum numbers, and compute the area of the
horizon. Agreement with the Bekenstein–Hawking
expression was the result, a dramatic culmination
of the attempts to explain black-hole entropy by
counting the microstates of strings. Since then many
papers have generalized the result to a diverse class of
black objects in string theory — including refs 32–38.
More recently, Atish Dabholkar, Sen, and others have
developed the technology to compute the precise
coefficient that Sen had estimated. Once again it
exactly agrees with expectations39–40.
It is worth noting that the string description of
the black-hole microstates has been confirmed in
another way. The detailed properties of the Hawking
radiation from an almost extremal black hole as it
decays towards extremality have been compared with
the radiation from systems of strings41–45. The decay
rates for emission are computed by two methods.
The first is the study of conventional quantum field
theory in a black-hole background. In the second
method no mention is made of black holes — the
emission is computed by standard string-theory
amplitudes. Remarkably, the results are again in
precise agreement.
BLACK-HOLE COMPLEMENTARITY
The paradoxes of black-hole physics become clearest
when we focus on a very large black hole with a
radius so enormous that the entire Solar System
could fall through the horizon and not reach the
singularity for many generations. According to
the equivalence principle, the observer and the
rest of her world pass the horizon smoothly and
safely, and only begin to experience significant tidal
forces many years later. On the other hand, from
the outside, the falling observer is seen to fall into
a region of increasing temperature where quantum
mechanics requires that her bits be thermalized, and
eventually re-emitted among the black body photons
and gravitons of the Hawking radiation.
The discrepancy between the two descriptions
is not a subtle microscopic difference. In both
stories, the infalling observer is eventually
THE RESOLUTION OF THE BLACK-HOLE
PARADOX RESTS ON A FORM OF QUANTUM
COMPLEMENTARITY.
destroyed, but there is a disagreement of
astronomical proportions about where and when
this event takes place. It was almost universally
assumed that one or the other must be wrong,
but, over the last decade, impressive evidence has
accumulated that both stories are correct: they are,
in a sense, quantum mechanically complementary
descriptions of the same thing.
Complementarity is, of course, not a new
thing in quantum physics. Niels Bohr emphasized
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the complementary descriptions of the wave and
particle aspects of light. Depending on the precise
experimental setup, and the precise question being
asked, a wave description or a particle description
may be more appropriate. Another famous example
is the complementarity between position and
momentum: classically, a particle has both a position
and a momentum, but quantum mechanically it has a
position or a momentum.
Beginning with Werner Heisenberg, physicists
have tried to cook up gedanken experiments
designed to simultaneously determine position and
momentum. But they always fail. The uncertainty
principle is internally consistent: the experiment
will always disturb the system in just the right
way to prevent a measurement that violates the
uncertainty principle. However, under normal
circumstances, quantum mechanics operates only
at the microscopic level and one doesn’t expect
such limitations to be reflected at macroscopic or
astronomical scales. Nevertheless, the resolution of
the black-hole paradox rests on a form of quantum
complementarity, one that can operate on very
large scales. What it says is that the two apparently
conflicting descriptions are complementary.
Depending on the experiment, the more appropriate
description may be the external observer’s, or the
freely falling observer’s.
To establish the consistency of this hypothesis,
it must be subjected to the same kind of test that
Heisenberg applied to the uncertainty principle.
Heisenberg imagined observing an electron under
an optical microscope, and measuring its position
at two neighbouring times, so that both the position
and velocity would be observable — classically.
But what he found was that the particle nature of
light invariably frustrated the attempt. Roughly
speaking, the photons in Heisenberg’s microscope
were subject to their own uncertainty principle. To
locate the electron sharply, light of short wavelength
would be required, meaning that, to locate the
electron precisely, it would have to be struck by a
photon of large momentum. The kick would ruin the
determination of the electron’s original momentum.
Black-hole complementarity exhibits exactly the
same kind of internal consistency46, as the following
example shows, which involves the fate of a proton
falling into a large black hole. The proton belongs to
a class of particles called ‘baryons’, and its ‘baryon
number’ is 1 (the antiproton has baryon number −1).
In all modern theories, conservation of baryon
number is, at best, an approximation. If nothing
else, it is guaranteed that the evaporation of a black
hole will violate baryon conservation. Generally it
is expected that in high-energy collisions, or at high
temperature, baryon number will be violated well
below the Planck energy or temperature.
Let us follow the progress of the proton as it
approaches the horizon. According to the observer
who is falling with the proton, it is not subjected to
anything more violent than the weak tidal forces at
the horizon. If the black hole is much bigger than
the proton, these effects are completely negligible
and the proton will remain intact until it approaches
the singularity much later, far from the horizon. On
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 REVIEW ARTICLE
the other hand, the external observer says that the
proton encounters microscopic degrees of freedom,
heated to enormous temperatures, as it approaches
the horizon. The local temperature increases
inversely with distance to the horizon, so at some
point, while the proton is still outside the horizon,
it will be subjected to high enough temperature to
cause it to decay.
Now let’s try to derive a contradiction. For
example, the observer falling with the proton could
attempt to send a message to the outside, reporting
that the proton survived the horizon crossing.
This experiment could be repeated over and over
by the distant observer who would be forced to
conclude that protons do not decay even though
they encounter ultra-energetic degrees of freedom.
If this experiment were possible it would disprove
black-hole complementarity. But the experiment is
obviously not possible: causality prevents any signal
originating from behind the horizon to get to the
outside. That was easy.

But the experiment can be modified so that
the infalling observer monitors the proton and
sends the message just before it crosses the horizon.
Classically this experiment is quite feasible, but, just
as in Heisenberg’s experiment, the particle nature of
light (or other signal carriers) will defeat the attempt.
To see why, assume that the threshold temperature
for inducing baryon violation is Tb. From equation
(5), the proton encounters this temperature when its
proper distance from the horizon is ρb, given by
1 .
ρb =
2πTb
Once the proton gets this close to the horizon, there
is very little time to interact with it and send out the
message. From when the proton is at distance ρb until
it crosses the horizon the proper time is of order
δτ ~ ρb = 1 .
(10)
2πTb
Thus the falling observer has a very short time in
which to detect the relevant bit of information (proton
or no proton) and send out the signal. Classically,
an arbitrary amount of information can be carried
by a signal of arbitrarily small energy. But quantum
mechanically, information must be carried by discrete
quanta. At least one quantum must be involved and
its emission must take place during the time interval
specified by equation (10). It follows that the proton
must interact with a quantum carrying energy at least
of order Tb — that is, a sufficiently energetic quantum
to cause the proton to decay. Thus the experiment
cannot be done without disturbing the very quantity
we are trying to measure. The situation is very
reminiscent of Heisenberg’s difficulty in measuring
velocity and position46.
THE HOLOGRAPHIC PRINCIPLE
The earliest attempts to quantize gravity were based
on conventional quantum field theory. However,
over the last decade it has become abundantly
A. FABIAN ET AL./CXC/NASA
The core of the Perseus cluster. The blue–green wisps near the centre could be the remains
of a small galaxy, falling into a supermassive black hole at the cluster core.
clear that conventional, local, four-dimensional
quantum field theory has far too many degrees of
freedom to describe a system that includes gravity.
This was more or less clear from the uncontrollable
ultraviolet divergences that plagued early attempts to
quantize Einstein’s equations. The thought occurred
to many people that a cutoff at the Planck length
would fix the problems. In other words, the right
theory should not have a continuum of degrees of
freedom but more likely, one degree of freedom
per Planck volume of space. The idea was to divide
space into discrete ‘voxels’ (volume-pixels, the
three-dimensional analogue of pixels). But, as we
will see, this is still a tremendous overestimate of the
number of degrees of freedom, the correct number
for a gravitating system is vastly fewer than one per
Planck volume.
To see why this is so, let us consider the concept
of the maximum entropy of a system. The entropy of
a system is maximum when nothing at all is known
about the system. In that case, the number of possible
quantum states that the system can occupy is the
dimensionality of the Hilbert space of states — call
it N. The maximum entropy is the logarithm of this
number: Smax = logN.
As a simple illustrative example that might serve
as a model for a voxelated quantum field theory,
consider a spatial lattice of binary degrees of freedom.
For example, each cell of a cubic lattice might have
a fermion degree of freedom that can either be
occupied or unoccupied. The number of cells of the
lattice is given by V/V0, where V is the volume of

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 REVIEW ARTICLE
the system and V0 is the volume of a single cell. The
dimensionality of the space of states is
N = 2V/V0 ,
and the maximum entropy is
Smax = V log 2 .
V0
In this latter equation, we see two general features of
maximum entropy. The first, which is very general,
is that it is proportional to the number of discrete
degrees of freedom required to describe the system.
This is deeply built into the definition of entropy, and
is fundamental to its connection with information.
The second feature is also very general but only in
theories without gravity: the maximum entropy
is proportional to the volume of the system under
consideration. This is the case for any quantum field
theory in which an ultraviolet regulator limits the
degrees of freedom in an approximately local way.
Nevertheless, it is a gross overestimate when gravity
is present.
What is the maximum entropy that can be
stuffed into a spherical region of space? Suppose
the region initially contains matter with total
entropy S0. The mass of the system obviously must
F. YUSEF-ZADEH ET AL./VLA/NRAO
The centre of the Milky Way, in radio waves. The bright region, known as Sagittarius A*,
probably surrounds a black hole at the galactic core.
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be less than that of a black hole that would fill the
region, otherwise it would overflow the region.
Now imagine a spherical shell of matter collapsing
around the system with just enough mass to turn
it into a black hole with radius R. This process is
always possible and the result will be a black hole of
entropy given by
4πR2 .
Sf = A =
4G 4G
If the final entropy Sf is less than the initial
entropy S0, we will have violated the second law of
thermodynamics. Thus we may conclude that the
initial entropy must have been less than A/4G. In
other words the maximum entropy that a region
of space can contain is given by the so-called
holographic bound15,47,
A
Smax ≤ .
4G
The maximum entropy, and therefore the maximum
number of degrees of freedom of a region of space
is not proportional to its volume, but rather to
its area (in Planck units). Thus, the number of
degrees of freedom per Planck volume decreases
like 1/R for large R. Evidently, the reduction in the
number of degrees of freedom required to describe
a gravitational system is radically greater than an
ordinary cutoff would suggest.
The implication of the holographic bound is
far-reaching and counter-intuitive. It suggests
that all phenomena in a given region of space
can be completely described by a theory that in
some sense lives on the boundary of that region.
Moreover, the boundary theory has no more
than one degree of freedom per Planck area.
To say it succinctly, a world with gravity is a
pixelated world, not a voxelated world. This most
unintuitive conclusion is known as the holographic
principle. As strange as it seems, and although
some authors still find it difficult to accept, it has
received support from the rigorous mathematics of
supersymmetric string theory.
CONFIRMATION BY STRING THEORY
The strongest confirmation of the complementarity
idea and the holographic principle was through
the remarkable correspondence, discovered by
Juan Maldacena in 1998, between supersymmetric
quantum field theory and quantum gravity in
anti de Sitter space48. The connection with the
holographic principle was made explicit by Edward
Witten and myself49,50.
Anti de Sitter space (AdS) is the vacuum solution
of Einstein’s equations with a negative value of the
cosmological constant. Such spaces, in various
dimensions, can be found among the solutions of
string theory with appropriate compactifications. The
metric of D-dimensional AdS is given by
R2
ds2 =
(1−r2)2
[
(1+r2)dt2 − 4dr2 − 4r2dΩ2 ],
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where R is the overall scale of the geometry and
dΩ2 is the metric of a (D−2)-sphere. The radial
coordinate r runs from 0 to 1. The surface r = 1 is the
boundary of AdS. Basically, AdS can be thought of
as the space inside a spherical cavity with reflecting
walls. Strictly speaking, the spatial geometry is
infinite (as the r,r component of the metric diverges
at the boundary). However, it is easy to see that light
rays from r = 0 will reflect off the boundary and
return to the origin after a finite time. Moreover the
spectrum of harmonics in AdS is discrete, just as if
AdS were a finite cavity of radius ~ R.
According to Maldacena, string theory in a
background AdS is exactly equivalent to a quantum
field theory that lives on the boundary of the space
at r = 1. In other words, the theory in the bulk
(r < 1), containing gravitational degrees of freedom,
gauge fields and scalar fields, is equivalent to a
supersymmetric quantum field theory that lives
on the boundary of the space. The most famous
example involves taking five of the dimensions of
ten-dimensional string theory and compactifying
them in the form of a five-sphere. The remaining
dimensions constitute five-dimensional AdS, and
the boundary of space is three-dimensional. Thus
the term ‘area’ in this context refers to a three-
dimensional measure. In this case the full quantum
gravity in AdS(5) is mapped to a conventional
supersymmetric (3+1) dimensional quantum
field theory whose degrees of freedom are on the
boundary. Moreover, it is possible to count the
number of degrees of freedom of this theory and
explicitly confirm that it requires no more than
about one bit per Planck area50 to describe the
five-dimensional bulk world. A variety of similar
examples with other numbers of dimensions, exist,
and have been thoroughly explored. There is no
doubt that string theory in AdS is holographic.
All systems that contain gravity have black-
hole solutions to the field equations. This includes
string theory in AdS. One of the simplest and most
interesting is the BTZ black hole in three-dimensional
AdS51,52. Such black holes have been well studied by
relativists, and their Bekenstein entropy and Hawking
temperatures calculated. The remarkable implication
that string theorists seized on is that these black
holes (living in the bulk) must have an alternative
description in terms of the holographic field theory on
the boundary.
In fact the boundary description of the bulk
black holes is very simple. A stable, static, AdS
black hole, centred at r = 0, is represented by the
finite temperature thermal equilibrium state of the
boundary field theory. The mass of the black hole
is the thermal energy of the quantum field theory
and it is varied by varying the temperature. The
thermodynamic relations of the black hole are exactly
what is expected for the thermal physics of the
boundary field theory53.
The AdS black hole can be perturbed by throwing
things into it from the boundary, and one can ask
whether information will be lost to the boundary
observer who stays outside. Hawking’s original
arguments indicate that the information contained
in an incoming perturbation will be lost behind the
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horizon. Complementarity suggests that information
may be scrambled but not lost. The question can be
translated into properties of response functions in the
black-hole background54.
Consider a response function, in the black-hole
background, of the form R(t − t´) = <φ(t´)φ(t)>,
where φ(t´) and φ(t) are bulk fields evaluated outside
the horizon (near the boundary) at two times. Such a
correlation function can be computed using quantum
field theory in the classical black-hole background
and the result is that it exponentially decays as
(t − t´) → ∞. The conventional interpretation of this
result is that the information contained in the initial
perturbation is quickly lost behind the horizon.
However, exponential decay is not the result
expected in the boundary quantum field theory.
The discrete spectrum in the finite cavity implies a
different behaviour. Typically the correlation function
THE REAL POINT IS THAT THE BOUNDARY
QUANTUM FIELD THEORY IS UNITARY, THERE IS
NO POSSIBILITY TO LOSE INFORMATION.
decays to a value exponentially small in the entropy54,
but over very long time scales it behaves in a quasi-
periodic manner. Of course, the real point is that the
boundary quantum field theory is a conventional
quantum system satisfying unitary time evolution.
There is no possibility to lose information.
THE ULTRAVIOLET–INFRARED CONNECTION
Let’s consider another gedanken experiment. This time
a stable point particle, such as an electron, falls through
the horizon of a large black hole at a particular point
with angular coordinates Ω. According to the infalling
observer, the electron remains well localized (in angular
coordinates) as it falls through the horizon. On the
other hand, from the outside, the electron enters a
hot conducting plasma and spends the rest of eternity
being absorbed among the thermal degrees of freedom.
Once the disturbance created by the electron has been
thermalized, the information that it carried will have
diffused over the entire horizon, just like a drop of ink
falling into a bathtub of warm water. Once again, let’s
try to derive a contradiction. This time the infalling
observer shoots a photon at the electron. The photon
scatters off the electron and goes out to the external
observer, who then traces it back to the localized point
on the horizon. Again, if this were possible it would
falsify the idea that the electron becomes absorbed into
a thermal bath of degrees of freedom.
It is evident that as the electron gets closer and
closer to the horizon, the photon’s energy (in the
electron frame) must increase in order to catch the
electron before it crosses the horizon. Eventually the
energy will exceed the Planck energy. From the point
of view of localizing the electron, this sounds like a
good thing: the higher the photon energy, the better
the spatial resolution. However, this logic is incorrect
and brings us to a new concept — the ultraviolet–
infrared connection.
Let us consider an experiment to probe the
structures at distance scale d. In conventional
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particle physics we would collide two particles with
centre-of-mass energy of order 1/d. Extrapolating
to distances much smaller than the Planck length,
we would probe these ultra-small distances with
‘transplankian’ particles, of energy way above the
Planck mass.
Surprisingly, we know a great deal about collisions
at very transplanckian energy scales. If the impact
parameter of the collision is small, the two colliding
particles concentrate a large energy, E ~ 1/d, in a
small volume near the collision point. What follows
is the creation of a black-hole horizon surrounding
the collision. The attempt to observe the collision is
frustrated because the higher the energy, the larger the
horizon. In fact the horizon that forms has a radius of
order RS ~ EG ~ G/d. The temperature (and energy)
of the emitted particles decreases as 1/RS = d/G. Thus
we come to the surprising conclusion that increasing
the energy of a collision decreases our resolving
power. The observed collision region is spread over
an increasing distance scale. Moreover, the emitted
particles — the Hawking radiation — have increasing
wavelength. Instead of probing ever smaller distances,
increasing the energy has the opposite effect.
The implication for the gedanken experiment at
the black-hole horizon is clear. As the original electron
approaches the horizon, the attempt to localize it by
hitting it with an increasingly high-energy photon
backfires. The collision region spreads out over the
horizon and produces the result expected by the
external observer — the bit of information carried by
the electron is effectively spread over the horizon.
This unconventional connection between energy
and probed distance-scale is called the ultraviolet–
infrared connection. We can formulate the principle
by drawing a graph of energy versus d, the distance
scale probed. Conventional twentieth century physics
is based on the behaviour d ~ 1/E. But this relation
‘bottoms out’ at the Planck scale, at which point the
curve will turn up and tend towards d ~ EG.
The properties of high-energy collisions in a
theory of gravity can tell us a little more about the
location of the electron — in particular, how far
from the horizon it will be after time t. Classically
the electron approaches the horizon according
to ρ ~ e–t/4MG.
But once again, the properties of high-energy
collisions reveal that the electron position remains
uncertain to within a Planck distance of the
horizon14,55. This fuzzy region, about a Planck-distance
deep, is called the stretched horizon3,56.
The ultraviolet–infrared connection has been
confirmed in many ways in string theory. The oldest
example is the Regge behaviour of strings when they
scatter. All scattering amplitudes in string theory,
beginning with the original Veneziano amplitude,
show that the observed size of the scattering particles
grows with energy. Again, AdS gives a very precise
version of the ultraviolet–infrared connection50.
CONCLUSION
Does all of this mean that quantum black holes
are completely understood? My own view is that
we know enough to say that black holes have
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microscopic degrees of freedom that are invisible
in the classical theory, and that these degrees of
freedom correctly account for the Bekenstein
entropy. Moreover, information is not lost in
black-hole formation and evaporation, although
it is maximally scrambled. But we don’t have
anything like a full understanding of these degrees
of freedom. Our arguments are always indirect.
Instead of attacking the structure of the horizon
directly, we resort to a trick — adiabatic variation of
some control parameter until the black hole turns
into something that we do understand. But the
holographic principle suggests that there is a direct
description in terms of ‘pixels’ distributed over the
horizon with about one per Planck area. So far, we
still don’t have such a direct microscopic picture. A
clear description of planckian physics still eludes us.
I think it is certain that we still have a great deal
more to understand about the nature of horizons. I
will conclude this article by mentioning one of the
more fascinating questions about horizons raised
by cosmology. It is well known that de Sitter (not
anti de Sitter) space — the cosmological solution
to Einstein’s equations with a positive cosmological
constant — has an event horizon that closely
resembles a black-hole horizon. The observational
discovery that the expansion of the Universe is
accelerating probably means that such a cosmic
event horizon really exists.
The metric of de Sitter space has the form
ds2 = R2[–(1–r2)dt2 + (1–r2)–1dr2 + r2 dΩ2],
where R refers to the overall size of the de Sitter
geometry, and is inversely proportional to the Hubble
expansion rate. The similarity with the Schwarzschild
metric of equation (1) is obvious. A horizon exists at
r = 1 where the function (1 − r2) vanishes. But in this
case the observer can be thought of as being located
at r = 0. In other words, we are in the interior of a
region bounded by a horizon. As in the black-hole
case, the horizon has an entropy, a temperature equal
to 1/(2πR) and, finally, it radiates Hawking radiation of
frequency ~ 1/R.
In time, the accelerating expansion of the
Universe will cause our neighbouring galaxies to pass
out through the horizon and we will lose all contact
with them. But it is an interesting conceptual question
whether they will leave behind their imprint in the
same way that information that fell through a black-
hole horizon reappears, albeit in a scrambled form, in
the Hawking radiation.
References
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physics. Phys. Rev. D 9, 3292–3300 (1974).
2. Bekenstein, J. D. Black holes and entropy. Phys. Rev. D 7, 2333–2346 (1973).
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Acknowledgements
L.S. is supported by the National Science Foundation under PHY-0097915.
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