HET Brown Bag Seminar | Cryptographic Censorship

The classical formulation of the weak cosmic censorship conjecture (WCCC) – the statement that singularities resulting from gravitational collapse are generically hidden behind event horizons – is most probably false. However, I will argue that there is compelling evidence that some version of it should be true in quantum gravity. Working towards a quantum gravitational formulation of the WCCC, I will prove “Cryptographic Censorship”, a theorem that provides a general condition for the formation of event horizons in AdS/CFT: sufficiently (pseudo)random boundary dynamics. I will also provide a classification of sizes of singularities, and show that “large”, “classical” singularities – the ones that the WCCC should rule out – are compatible with sufficiently (pseudo)random dynamics. Thus, if such singularities are indeed described by (pseudo)random dynamics, then they cannot exist in the absence of event horizons.