Information consumption by Reissner-Nordstrom black holes

Abstract

The low-energy scattering of charged fermions by extremal magnetic Reissner-Nordstrom black holes is analyzed in the large-N and S-wave approximations. It is shown that (in these approximations) information is carried into a causally inaccessible region of spacetime, and thereby effectively lost. It is also shown that there is an infinite degeneracy of quantum black hole ground states, or "remnants," which store, but will not reveal, the information. A notable feature of the analysis, not shared by recent analyses of dilatonic black holes, is that the key physical questions can be answered within the weak coupling domain. We regard these results as strong evidence that effective information loss occurs in our Universe.