A study co-authored by USC Dornsife’s Nicholas Warner outlines new hypothetical frameworks termed “supermazes” that provide a clearer understanding of black holes. (Illustration/iStock)
Science/Technology
A novel route to comprehending black holes
New revelations may provide a profound understanding of black-hole microstructures in theoretical physics. USC Dornsife’s Nicholas Warner elaborates.
A group of physicists has unveiled a fresh strategy that reshapes the perception of black holes by charting their intricate structures, as illustrated in a research study recently released in Journal of High Energy Physics.
The work outlines new theoretical structures referred to as “supermazes” that provide a more comprehensive representation of black holes to the realm of theoretical physics. Grounded in string theory, supermazes are crucial for understanding the microscopic structure of black holes.
“General relativity is an effective theory for depicting the large-scale architecture of black holes, however, it is a rather crude tool for describing black-hole microstructure,” stated Nicholas Warner, co-author of the research and professor of physics, astronomy, and mathematics at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. In a theoretical framework that extends beyond Einstein’s equations, supermazes present an intricate image of the microscopic structure of brane black holes.
Re-envisioning the black hole
Black holes are entities with gravitational forces strong enough to capture light, and the conventional black hole of general relativity is encircled by an event horizon. From the external perspective of this event horizon, such a black hole appears devoid of features — yet this fundamentally contradicts quantum mechanics. Within the domain of quantum gravity, which goes beyond general relativity, black holes are required to display an extensive degree of microstructure.
String theory can accomplish this by substituting classical black holes with conceptual constructs termed “fuzzballs.” Warner’s research illustrates how one can construct fuzzballs from supermazes composed of physical objects in higher-dimensional spacetime, forming an entity that mimics the behavior of a black hole while exhibiting all its structure.
“Imagine you wanted a depiction of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment: General relativity, with its horizons, resembles employing a camera with merely one pixel,” Warner remarked. “All you observe is a single smear of color. Our previous studies provided an image with perhaps 1,000 pixels: outlines of structures and some shading. Supermazes are akin to having countless billions of pixels allowing us to appreciate the masterpiece in fine detail.”
Supermazes reconstitute black holes in M-theory
The latest research is rooted in M-theory, a theoretical construct in physics linked to string theory. M-theory asserts that strings — the essential building blocks of the cosmos — are not one-dimensional. Rather, they exist in higher dimensions as “branes,” short for membranes, which are tangible objects extending across multiple spatial dimensions. Branes bear multidimensional surfaces that function significantly in string theory and M-theory.
“In this paper, we investigate intersecting configurations of M2-branes (two-dimensional) and M5-branes (five-dimensional) within the context of supergravity, which is a low-energy approximation of M-theory,” Warner mentioned. “We conceptualize the maze as the ‘substrate’ upon which all the details about whatever constituted the black hole, or ever fell into it, can be inscribed.”
By examining the maze function that governs these brane intersections, the research demonstrates how mazes possess the ability to recreate black hole entropy and possibly describe black hole microstates.
An innovative approach to charting black holes
Brane intersections have been extensively analyzed in string theory, but the new paper redefines these concepts to generate new geometries that can represent black holes. The study advances a “maze function,” a novel mathematical construct that articulates solutions for intersecting systems of M2 and M5 branes in supergravity. The maze function must comply with a nonlinear differential equation similar to the renowned Monge-Ampère equation, which dictates the geometry and dynamics of M2 and M5 brane intersections.
“Maze functions are critical in linking the brane configurations to supergravity solutions, which in turn create a new avenue to delve into black-hole microstates,” Warner stated. “The maze function serves as the billion-pixel camera that can provide us with a profound and intricate representation of the microstructure of black holes.”
Warner remarked that this marks merely the initial phase in a broader initiative to establish a thorough string theory account of brane black hole microstructures.
About the research: Besides Warner, other investigators include Iosif Bena from Institut de Physique Théorique, Université Paris-Saclay, France; Anthony Houppe from Institut für Theoretische Physik, ETH Zürich, Switzerland; and Dimitrios Toulikas from Institut de Physique Théorique, Université Paris-Saclay, France.
The research was backed by European Research Council Grant 787320-QBH and Department of Energy Grant DE-SC0011687.