Edgar Shaghoulian

University of California, Santa Cruz, March 30, 1:00 pm

Black holes, cosmology, and quantum entanglement

Stephen Hawking’s black hole information paradox is a conflict between gravity and quantum mechanics, and it has been both a crisis and a guiding light for theoretical physicists for over 40 years. I will describe recent work showing that wormholes in quantum gravity lead to a new formula for entropy – this formula corrects Hawking’s and is consistent with both gravity and quantum mechanics. Tools from quantum information science then imply the surprising idea that we can manipulate the interior of a black hole from the safety of our laboratory, without ever jumping in. I will end by using this new paradigm to provide an example of such nonlocal connections in cosmology.