Dilaton gravity with a boundary: from unitarity to black hole evaporation

Maxim Fitkevich, Dmitry Levkov, Yegor Zenkevich

Published 2020-04-28Version 1

We point out that two-dimensional Russo-Susskind-Thorlacius (RST) model for evaporating black holes is locally equivalent - at the full quantum level - to Jackiw-Teitelboim (JT) gravity that was recently shown to be unitary. Globally, the two models differ by a reflective spacetime boundary added in the RST model. Treating the boundary as a local and covariant deformation of quantum JT theory, we develop sensible semiclassical description of evaporating RST black holes. Nevertheless, our semiclassical solutions fail to resolve the information recovery problem, and they do not indicate formation of remnants. This means that either the standard semiclassical method incorrectly describes the evaporation process or the RST boundary makes the JT model fundamentally inconsistent.