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Published on: August 2, 2019
Black holes as critical point of quantum phase transition
1Department für Physik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physics, Theresienstr. 37, 80333 München, Germany ; Max-Planck-Institut für Physik, Föhringer Ring 6, 80805 München, Germany ; Theory Department, CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland ; Department of Physics, Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, New York University, 4 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003 USA.
Abstract:
We reformulate the quantum black hole portrait in the language of modern condensed matter physics. We show that black holes can be understood as a graviton Bose-Einstein condensate at the critical point of a quantum phase transition, identical to what has been observed in systems of cold atoms. The Bogoliubov modes that become degenerate and nearly gapless at this point are the holographic quantum degrees of freedom responsible for the black hole entropy and the information storage. They have no (semi)classical counterparts and become inaccessible in this limit. These findings indicate a deep connection between the seemingly remote systems and suggest a new quantum foundation of holography. They also open an intriguing possibility of simulating black hole information processing in table-top labs.
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