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arXiv · 2609.05164

The endless journey towards the horizon of a quantum black hole

Victor Franken·Thomas G. Mertens·Bruno de S. L. Torres
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Abstract

It is a problem of great importance in quantum gravity whether quantum effects lead to nontrivial structure near black hole horizons, and if their interiors are emergent features of a large $N$ limit. We show that the strongly chaotic nature of black holes, captured by random matrix statistics of their spectrum, makes it so that a suitably gravitationally dressed infalling observer takes an infinite amount of proper time to reach the horizon. This makes the black hole interior operationally inaccessible to any outside observer, marking a sharp breakdown of the large $N$ causal structure of black holes in quantum gravity. To model the experience of an infalling observer, we study the response of an infalling particle detector coupled to a matter field in a 2d quantum black hole background, finding a peak in the detector's excitation probability as it enters an infinitely long non-perturbative journey close to the black hole horizon.

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Victor Franken, Thomas G. Mertens, Bruno de S. L. Torres. 2026-09-04. The endless journey towards the horizon of a quantum black hole. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.05164

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