Dissipation of quantum information near the event horizon of Schwarzschild black holes: An alternative interpretation of the information paradox

We report an alternative interpretation of the information paradox for black holes, which has been one of the most intriguing problems in theoretical physics. We found that the Wigner rotation of a particle with spin 1/2, which is unitary in Minkowski spacetime, becomes non-unitary as the particle is falling onto the black hole. This implies that, from the quantum information processing point of view, any quantum information encoded in spins will be dissipated near the black hole. The event horizon thus acts like a dissipative quantum channel and the quantum information is dissipated before the particle falls and disappears into the black hole. The information is dissipated into the gravitational field or more specifically the metric of the curved spacetime around the black hole. The overall information may be still preserved as the universe evolves even though it would be difficult to retrieve the original quantum information because a part of it was already dissipated irreversibly into the gravitational field