Band-aid for information loss from black holes

We summarize, simplify and extend recent work showing that small deviations from exact thermality in Hawking radiation, first uncovered by Kraus and Wilczek, have the capacity to carry off the maximum information content of a black hole. This goes a considerable way toward resolving a long-standing “information loss paradox.”

Figure 1

(a) Electron pair creation as tunneling. (b) March of $a\tau$.

Figure 2

$L\to R$ tunneling in an eternal black hole.

Figure 3

Shell tunneling through the future horizon. First (a), the outer face ${\Sigma }_{+}$ tunnels through the initial location $H^{+}$ of the apparent horizon. Finally (b), the inner face ${\Sigma }_{-}$ tunnels through the shrunken horizon $H^{-}$.