Frozen Vacuum

Abstract

Modes just outside the horizon of a typical old black hole are thermally entangled with distant Hawking radiation. This precludes their entangled purity with interior modes, leading to a firewall. Identifying the interior with the distant radiation ("A=R_B", "ER=EPR") can resolve the entanglement conflict. But the map must adjust for any interactions, or else the firewall will reappear if the Hawking radiation scatters off the CMB. With a self-correcting map, an infalling observer is unable to excite the vacuum near the horizon. This allows the horizon to be locally detected and so violates the equivalence principle.