Soft Hair on Black Holes

• Published in: Physical review letters Vol. 116; no. 23; p. 231301
• Main Authors: Hawking, Stephen W, Perry, Malcolm J, Strominger, Andrew
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 10.06.2016
• ISSN: 1079-7114
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.231301

It has recently been shown that Bondi-van der Burg-Metzner-Sachs supertranslation symmetries imply an infinite number of conservation laws for all gravitational theories in asymptotically Minkowskian spacetimes. These laws require black holes to carry a large amount of soft (i.e., zero-energy) supertranslation hair. The presence of a Maxwell field similarly implies soft electric hair. This Letter gives an explicit description of soft hair in terms of soft gravitons or photons on the black hole horizon, and shows that complete information about their quantum state is stored on a holographic plate at the future boundary of the horizon. Charge conservation is used to give an infinite number of exact relations between the evaporation products of black holes which have different soft hair but are otherwise identical. It is further argued that soft hair which is spatially localized to much less than a Planck length cannot be excited in a physically realizable process, giving an effective number of soft degrees of freedom proportional to the horizon area in Planck units.