Comment on "Measurements without probabilities in the final state proposal"

Abstract

The final state proposal [G.T. Horowitz and J.M. Maldacena, J. High Energy Phys. 2004(2), 8 (2004)] is an attempt to relax the apparent tension between string theory and semiclassical arguments regarding the unitarity of black hole evaporation. The authors of [R. Bousso and D. Stanford, Phys. Rev. D 89, 044038 (2014)] analyze thought experiments where an infalling observer first verifies the entanglement between early and late Hawking modes and then verifies the interior purification of the same Hawking particle. They claim that "probabilities for outcomes of these measurements are not defined" and therefore suggest that "the final state proposal does not offer a consistent alternative to the firewall hypothesis." We show, in contrast, that one may define all the relevant probabilities based on the so-called ABL rule [Y. Aharonov, P.G. Bergmann, and J.L. Lebowitz, Phys. Rev. 134, 1410 (1964)], which is better suited for this task than the decoherence functional. We thus assert that the analysis of Bousso and Stanford cannot yet rule out the final state proposal.