Holographic Space-Time Does Not Predict Firewalls

Abstract

We use the formalism of Holographic Space-time (HST) to investigate the claim of [1] that old black holes contain a firewall, i.e. an in-falling observer encounters highly excited states at a time much shorter than the light crossing time of the Schwarzschild radius. This conclusion is much less dramatic in HST than in the hypothetical models of quantum gravity used in [1]. In HST there is no dramatic change in particle physics inside the horizon until a time of order the Schwarzschild radius.

LaTeX, 11 pages, 2 PDF figures, Version 2 has changes in references. Version 3 is a major revision, incorporating insights that arose in email conversations with D. Marolf and J. Polchinski. We have considerably sharpened our argument and the details of how the HST formalism manages to avoid the firewall. Our conclusion remains unchanged