Type: Article
Publication Date: 1994-12-15
Citations: 95
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.50.7403
The problem of information loss is considered under the assumption that the process of black hole evaporation terminates in the decay of the black hole interior into a baby universe. We show that such theories can be decomposed into superselection sectors labeled by eigenvalues of the third-quantized baby universe field operator, and that scattering is unitary within each superselection sector. This result relies crucially on the quantum-mechanical variability of the decay time. It is further argued that the decay rate in the black hole rest frame is necessarily proportional to ${\mathit{e}}_{\mathrm{tot}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}\mathit{S}}$, where ${\mathit{S}}_{\mathrm{tot}}$ is the total entropy produced during the evaporation process, entailing a very long-lived remnant.