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arXiv · 1607.07885

The Black Hole S-Matrix from Quantum Mechanics

Panagiotis Betzios·Nava Gaddam·Olga Papadoulaki
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Abstract

We revisit the old black hole S-Matrix construction and its new partial wave expansion of 't Hooft. Inspired by old ideas from non-critical string theory & $c=1$ Matrix Quantum Mechanics, we reformulate the scattering in terms of a quantum mechanical model\textemdash of waves scattering off inverted harmonic oscillator potentials\textemdash that exactly reproduces the unitary black hole S-Matrix for all spherical harmonics; each partial wave corresponds to an inverted harmonic oscillator with ground state energy that is shifted relative to the s-wave oscillator. Identifying a connection to 2d string theory allows us to show that there is an exponential degeneracy in how a given total initial energy may be distributed among many partial waves of the 4d black hole.

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Panagiotis Betzios, Nava Gaddam, Olga Papadoulaki. 2020-04-03. The Black Hole S-Matrix from Quantum Mechanics. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep11(2016)131

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