Weinberg Institute Seminar with Kenneth Higginbotham

Title: The backwards-forwards map: new perspectives on the black hole information paradox

Abstract:  If you throw your diary into a black hole, are the words lost forever? This question is central to the black hole information paradox: an observer falling in with the diary believes the information is locked behind the horizon, while an exterior observer eventually finds it scrambled into Hawking radiation. Insights from holography allow us to construct a "holographic map" that encodes the interior description within the exterior one, though such a map must annihilate many states seen by the interior observer. In this talk, I will present the "backwards-forwards map," a candidate holographic map that incorporates both interior and exterior dynamics from qubit toy models of a black hole.

Bio: Kenny is a graduate student at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he studies quantum gravity through the intersection of high energy theory and quantum information.