Chaos and thermal effects in black hole interactions

The understanding of the microscopic origin of chaos and thermal effects in the physics of black holes is very challenging.

Such fundamental aspects seem to be intimately connected, but a microscopic analytical description of their interplay is still missing. The quantum gravity description of these aspects could help clarify their microscopic interconnection.

The project I propose has the ambition to probe black hole states through highly excited string and coherent string states, providing a quantum microscopic description of chaos, thermal effects and information theory. The main observables are scattering and decay processes. The research programme contains the following parts.

First, a general strategy will be developed to measure, and analytically control, chaos in physical processes involving black holes, such as black hole decays and black hole Compton scattering.

In particular, a quantitative measure of chaos will be introduced using Random Matrix Theory techniques and the relative Lyapunov exponents will be computed.

Second, in order to study thermal effects in black hole processes, the triggering of the thermalization phase driven by chaos will be investigated. Finally, the project will consider the following direct applications.

The first one will be the study of chaotic signatures in wave forms and quasi-normal modes of gravitational and electro-magnetic waves; the second will concern the realization of black hole horizons in terms of highly excited string and coherent string form factors.