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Spacetime, quantum cloning and black holes

Patrick Hayden, Stanford University

(Session 7 : Friday from 10:30am - 11:15am)

Reconciling black hole evaporation with the unitarity of quantum mechanics is an endeavour frought with conceptual difficulties. Not least among them is the apparent need for quantum cloning or, equivalently, violations of the monogamy of entanglement. The most recent and confusing incarnation of this problem is the so-called firewall paradox, which interprets monogamy violations as an indication that black holes may not have interiors. This talk will begin with a more pedestrian question: understanding all the ways in which quantum information can be replicated in Minkowski spacetime. It turns out that there is an amazing variety, perhaps an indication that we should not be so worried about apparent violations of no-cloning in situations in which the causal structure of spacetime is itself in doubt. Towards the end, I will return to the black hole firewall problem and sketch some of the quantum information theoretic ideas that have been proposed as possible resolutions.