Black hole complementarity - absorption of Hawking radiation

Question

I try to understand two principles formulated by Leonard Susskind in his book The Black Hole War:

1, To any observer who remains outside a black hole, the stretched horizon appears to be a hot layer of horizon-atoms that absorb, scramble, and eventually emit (in the form of Hawking radiation) every bit of information that falls onto the black hole.

2, To a freely falling observer, the horizon appears to be absolutely empty space. [...]

Now, in reaction to (an unanswered) question by Nathaniel, let us suppose that a distant observer A sees (according to the principle #1) Hawking radiation from a black hole (with Planck spectrum and say measurable temperature). Now suppose there is a freely falling gas somewhere between the event horizon and the observer. According to the principle #2, to the gas (considered an observer B) the horizon is empty space so there is no light coming from it to absorp.

Would the observer A detect absorption lines in the black hole spectrum? How does it change with distance of the gas (or the observer) from the black hole? Will the distant observer see the lines if he is free falling?

Answer 1

This is not a full answer, since I don't know the full answer, but it is more than a comment.

My contribution is to compare your question with another, simpler one, and then come back to yours.

1. Observer-dependence of radiation in classical physics

Here is the simpler question (one to which an answer is known). A charged particle accelerating in empty space will emit electromagnetic radiation. A charged particle fixed at some point in a static gravitational field will not emit electromagnetic radiation. Both statements are true---relative to a certain natural choice of reference frame in each case. But, in the first example one could step on board a rocket accelerating with the particle, and no electromagnetic waves would be seen in the rocket frame. In the second example, one could go freely falling past the particle, and in this freely falling frame, electromagnetic radiation will be seen. So what is going on here? Does the charged particle emit radiation or doesn't it?

All of this scenario can be treated with special relativity, and it teaches good lessons to prepare us for general relativity. The main lesson here is that the process of emission and subsequent absorption of radiation is not absolute but relative, when accelerating reference frames are considered, but the state changes associated with absorbing radiation, such as a detector clicking, are absolute. It is the way we interpret what caused a detector to click that can change from one frame to another.

To make the above really connect with your question, note that in my simple scenarios I could imagine a cloud of gas possibly absorbing the radiation in between emitter and receiver, just like in your scenario.

2. To resolve a paradox in observer-dependent physics, first convince yourself about the easiest observer, then seek arguments to explain what the other observer finds

The above principle can be applied to resolve puzzles in relativity such as whether a fast pole can fit into a short barn, or whether a fast rivet can squash a bug in a hole.

3. Unruh effect has two complementary physical interpretations, depending on who is accelerating

Hawking radiation is like Unruh radiation, and therefore it is more subtle than classical radiation. A useful tip from the consideration of Unruh radiation is as follows. Unruh's calculation says a detector accelerating through the vacuum picks up internal energy, equivalent to detecting particles. Now if we look at this detector from an inertial frame, we still conclude it picks up excitation, but we interpret differently: we say the force pushing it provided some energy which got converted into internal energy because the process is not perfectly smooth.

4. Answer

Now I will apply all the above to provide an answer to your question. I admit I am not sure and the following answer is just my guess. I only claim it to be an intelligent guess.

My guess is that the distant observer observes Hawking radiation and absorption lines. I say this because it is a consistent summary of what seems to me to be ordinary physics, assuming that there is Hawking radiation coming up from a horizon.

So the puzzle is to explain this from the point of view of the freely falling cloud. I think an observer falling with the cloud looks up at his distant friend and notices that his friend is accelerating through the vacuum, and consequently experiencing internal excitation owing to fluctuation of the forces accelerating him. To account for the absorption lines, i.e. the absence of excitation at certain frequencies, I guess (and this is the speculative part) that now the calculation from quantum field theory would have to take into account that the rest of spacetime is not empty but has the cloud you mentioned, and this cloud affects the overall action of the quantum fields in this way. Note, it is not a case of action at a distance (in either perspective), but it is a highly surprising prediction so I think your question is a very interesting one.

Answer 2

Your point #1 has to do with the fact that some physicists believe that if information did not RETURN, it would violate the Unitary principle. The philosophy of Quantum Mechanics demands that Unitary is immutable. Therefore some people had come up with theories to show that information is not really lost in the blackhole.

I have not read the book you mention, but I happen to be reading The Rode to Reality from Penrose, and there is a section in the book where he actually touches on this same subject. However, I am afraid that Penrose, does not share this view, in effect in relation to your Point #1. To quote him (page 841), "I find it inconceivable that somehow 'at the moment just before the horizon is crossed' some sort of signal is emitted to the outside world conveying outwards the full details of all information contained in the collapsing material...Simply a signal would be by itself not be enough, since the material itself is, in a sense, really the "information" that one is concerned with. Once it has fallen through the horizon, the material is trapped, and is inevitably destroyed in the singularity itself"

Perhaps this is not the answer you were looking for, but I hope that it is of some value to you.

Answer 3

First of all sorry for answering you not having a physics education.

If the gas does not fall into the black hole (there is at least a minimal distance between the event horizon and the gas molecules) the absorption would behave the same way as if the black hole was a "regular" star that has the same spectrum as the Hawking radiation.

Because of the high speed of the gas and the large masses relativistic effects must be considered.

As far as I understand the Hawking radiation's source is the empty space near the event horizon of the black hole and not the black hole itself. That theory says that in empty space photons and anti-parts with a negative (!) energy (and mass) are formed but normally these pairs will destroy themselves at once. Near a black hole the anti-parts fall into the black hole while the photons depart from the black hole. (If this is true then Nathaniel's theory is wrong - the Hawking radiation is formed when the black hole is already existing.)

This would mean that the gas between the event horizon and the point where the Hawking radiation originates does not influence the Hawking radiation (while the gas that is more distant from the black hole behaves like the gas close to a "regular" star).

Answer 4

The large bounty encourages me to post a placeholder answer which I shall endeavor to improve over the next 24 hours... The Unruh effect has already been mentioned a few times - sometimes said to show that the existence of particles is relative to reference frame. Indeed, there is a reference frame in which an Unruh detector appears to emit a particle.

I suggest that the way to model this question is to treat the cloud of gas, as it crosses the event horizon, similarly to an Unruh detector; and to use something like Raju-Papadodimas formalism for AdS/CFT, to describe the two complementary scenarios (observer outside the event horizon, observer crossing the event horizon) in a unified way. I shall search to see if something like this has already been discussed in the literature on the information paradox.

update: Another way to think about this question... For a large black hole, the falling gas sees no significant difference immediately above and below the horizon. But for the distant observer, there is a radical difference between something that is outside the black hole and absorbing some of the Hawking radiation, and something that is part of the black hole and (in effect) producing some of the Hawking radiation. Yet by black hole complementarity, there should also be no significant difference between these two situations in the case of the falling gas. How can that be?

The answer must be a kind of Unruh-Hawking correspondence. The gas falling through the gently curved space just inside the horizon participates in some form of Unruh effect; and for the observer outside this horizon, this now corresponds to a continuing suppression of Hawking radiation on the wavelengths that the gas absorbs. Black hole complementarity demands that this should be so, and the challenge is to devise an account purely in terms of horizon thermodynamics (e.g. certain excited states of the black hole?) which reproduces this suppression.