Unitary Rules for Black Hole Evaporation

Andrew Strominger

Published 1994-10-26, updated 1994-11-04Version 2

Hawking has proposed non-unitary rules for computing the probabilistic outcome of black hole formation. It is shown that the usual interpretation of these rules violates the superposition principle and energy conservation. Refinements of Hawking's rules are found which restore both the superposition principle and energy conservation, but leave completely unaltered Hawking's prediction of a thermal emission spectrum prior to the endpoint of black hole evaporation. These new rules violate clustering. They further imply the existence of superselection sectors, within each of which clustering is restored and a unitary $S$-matrix is shown to exist. -- This is an expanded version of a talk given at the Seventh Marcel Grossman Meeting on General Relativity, Stanford CA.