Quantum hair and the string-black hole correspondence

Abstract

We consider a thought experiment in which an energetic massless string probes a "stringhole" (a heavy string lying on the correspondence curve between strings and black holes) at large enough impact parameter for the regime to be under theoretical control. The corresponding, explicitly unitary, $S$-matrix turns out to be perturbatively sensitive to the microstate of the stringhole: in particular, at leading order in $l_s/b$, it depends on a projection of the stringhole's Lorentz-contracted quadrupole moment. The string-black hole correspondence is therefore violated if one assumes quantum hair to be exponentially suppressed as a function of black-hole entropy. Implications for the information paradox are briefly discussed.