Thermal Duality and Gravitational Collapse

Abstract

Thermal duality is a relationship between the behaviour of heterotic string models of the $E(8)x E(8)$ or $SO(32)$ types at inversely related temperatures, a variant of T duality in the Euclidean regime. This duality would have consequences for the nature of the Hagedon transition in these string models. We propose that the vacuum admits a family of deformations in situations where there are closed surfaces of constant area but high radial acceleration (a string regularized version of a Penrose trapped surface), such as would be formed in situations of extreme gravitational collapse. This would allow a radical resolution of the firewall paradox by allowing quantum effects to significantly modify the spacetime geometry around a collapsed object. A string bremsstrahlung process would convert the kinetic energy of infalling matter in extreme gravitational collapse to form a region of the deformed vacuum, which would be equivalent to forming a high temperature string phase. This process might have observable consequences for charged particles falling into a rotating collapsed object by producing high energy particles via a variant of the Penrose process.