EXPLORING THE BLACK HOLE INFORMATION PARADOX

Abstract

Mere weeks after Albert Einstein published his theory of general relativity, Karl Schwarzschild came up with the simplest, static solution to Einstein’s field equations. This solution implied the existence of a compact object with an infinite potential well. This implied that even photons could not crawl out of this potential well and hence the phrase ”even light cannot escape a black hole” came into being. Black holes are characterized by the existence of an event horizon, a surface that disconnects the interior regions of the black hole from the exterior universe. These compact objects existed on paper, without any direct observational evidence, for a century. However, with the recent shift in interests towards gravitational wave astronomy and the success of projects like the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), we have been able to image the ”shadow” of the M87 black hole. General relativity predicts that the shadow of the black hole is going to be stationary while the weather around the black hole can be turbulent. The EHT project not only has the potential to look for any classical evidence for the quantum structure of black holes but also allows us to investigate further into the Black Hole Information Paradox. So, in this project, we develop a method to analyze the Fourier transforms of the perturbed metric around a black hole and describe the macroscopic consequences of each of the proposed solutions to the informatio nparadox. If we analyze the Fourier transforms of the perturbations, we can test the validity of general relativity’s prediction about the black hole’s shadow.