Integrability vs. Information Loss: A Simple Example

Abstract

The half-BPS sector of Yang-Mills theory with 16 supercharges is integrable: there is a set of commuting conserved charges, whose eigenvalues can completely identify a state. We show that these charges can be measured in the dual gravitational description from asymptotic multipole moments of the spacetime. However, Planck scale measurements are required to separate the charges of different microstates. Thus, semiclassical observers making coarse-grained measurements necessarily lose information about the underlying quantum state.