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An apologia for firewalls

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Abstract

We address claimed alternatives to the black hole firewall. We show that embedding the interior Hilbert space of an old black hole into the Hilbert space of the early radiation is inconsistent, as is embedding the semi-classical interior of an AdS black hole into any dual CFT Hilbert space. We develop the use of large AdS black holes as a system to sharpen the firewall argument. We also reiterate arguments that unitary non-local theories can avoid firewalls only if the non-localities are suitably dramatic.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, U.S.A.

    Ahmed Almheiri, Donald Marolf, Joseph Polchinski, Douglas Stanford & James Sully

  2. Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106-4030, U.S.A.

    Joseph Polchinski & Douglas Stanford

  3. Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics and Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, U.S.A.

    Douglas Stanford

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  1. Ahmed Almheiri
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  2. Donald Marolf
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  3. Joseph Polchinski
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  4. Douglas Stanford
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  5. James Sully
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Correspondence to Joseph Polchinski.

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ArXiv ePrint: 1304.6483v2

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Almheiri, A., Marolf, D., Polchinski, J. et al. An apologia for firewalls. J. High Energ. Phys. 2013, 18 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP09(2013)018

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