Information Consumption by Reissner-Nordstrom Black Holes

Abstract

The low-energy scattering of charged fermions by extremal magnetic Reissner-Nordstrom black holes is analyzed in the large-$N$ and $S$-wave approximations. It is shown that (in these approximations) information is carried into a causally inaccessible region of spacetime, and thereby effectively lost. It is also shown that there is an infinite degeneracy of quantum black hole ground states, or ``remnants", which store --- but will not reveal --- the information. A notable feature of the analysis --- not shared by recent analyses of dilatonic black holes --- is that the key physical questions can be answered within the weak coupling domain. We regard these results as strong evidence that effective information loss occurs in our universe.