Causal structure of evaporating black holes

Abstract

We offer a mathematically rigorous basis for the widely held suspicion that full black hole evaporation is in tension with predictability. Based on conditions expressing the global causal structure of evaporating black hole spacetimes, we prove two theorems in Lorentzian geometry showing that such spacetimes either fail to be causally simple or fail to be causally continuous. These theorems, when combined with recent results \cite{AM} on the causal structure of spacetimes with timelike boundary, bear significantly on the question of whether these spacetimes permit for a predictable evolution.