LAUSR

We investigated black hole evolution on a quantum-gravitational scattering framework with the aim of tackling the black hole information paradox. With this setup, various pieces of system information are explicit from the start and unitary evolution is manifest throughout. The scattering amplitudes factorize into a perturbative part and a non-perturbative part. The non-perturbative part is dominated by an instanton-type contribution, i.e. a black hole analogue of the Coleman–De Luccia bounce solution, and we propose that the Hawking radiation be identified with the particles generated by the vacuum decay. Our results indicate that the black hole degrees of freedom are entangled not only with the Hawking modes but also with the pre-Hawking modes. The Wald’s entropy charge measures their entanglement. The full quantum-gravitational entropy is defined as the vacuum expectation value of the Wald entropy charge. With this definition, a shifted Page-like curve is generically generated and its quantum extension is readily defined.