Huge entropy production inside black holes

Abstract

We show that the entropy created by Ohmic dissipation inside an accreting charged black hole may exceed the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy by a large factor. If the black hole subsequently evaporates, radiating only the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy, then the black hole appears to destroy entropy, violating the second law of thermodynamics. A companion paper discusses the implications of this startling result. Bousso's covariant entropy bound is not violated.