Paris conference on black hole information

Gravitational Scattering, Black Holes and the Information Paradox, May 26 - 28, 2008.

Web page here. My slides (pdf).

This is quite a good meeting so far. The atmosphere is informal, with about 50 participants.

Today there were two sessions. The conveners arranged brief talks to stimulate discussion, but the format was mostly open. In the early session the scheduled speakers were Giddings, Hawking, Andy Strominger and me. Hawking ended up not speaking, although he was in attendance. In the second session we had Gary Horowitz, Erik Verlinde and Strominger again.

10h 00 - 13h
What is the BH information paradox/problem/puzzle/question?
convener: T. Jacobson

14h 30 - 18h
Is string theory providing a statistical-mechanics interpretation of BH thermodynamics?
convener: J. Maldacena

I thought my talk went well, but I evidently did not convince either Giddings or Strominger that information loss to baby universes is a viable solution to the information problem :-(

There were a number of interesting exchanges. One in particular between 'tHooft, Maldacena, Englert, Giddings and Hawking lasted for some time. The issue was whether gravitational interactions between infalling particles and pre-Hawking radiation states are strong. 'tHooft maintained steadfastly that they are, with support from Englert. I couldn't quite tell what Hawking's opinion was, and all the others were opposed.

The remaining schedule is as follows.


Tuesday 27/05

10h 00 - 13h
Do quantum BH microstates have something to do with a classical geometry?
convener: D. Amati

14h 30 - 18h
Can the AdS/CFT correspondence teach us how to solve the information paradox?
convener: J. Polchinski


Wednesday 28/05

10h 00 - 13h
What can we learn from the study of transplanckian-energy collisions?
convener: G. Veneziano

14h 30 - 18h
BH and workshop evaporation: did we gain any new information?
convener: TBA