Violations of the Born rule in cool state-dependent horizons

Abstract

The black hole information problem has motivated many proposals for new physics. One idea, known as state-dependence, is that quantum mechanics must be generalized to describe the physics of black holes, and that fixed linear operators do not provide the fundamental description of experiences for infalling observers. Instead, such experiences are to be described by operators with an extra dependence on the global quantum state. By generalizing a previous argument for firewalls in generic black holes, we show that any implementation of this idea strong enough to remove firewalls from generic states requires massive violations of the Born rule. We also demonstrate a sense in which such violations are visible to infalling observers involved in preparing the initial state of the black hole. We emphasize the generality of our results; no details of any specific proposal for state-dependence are required.