Samir D. Mathur

Samir D. Mathur is an Indian-American theoretical physicist, specializing in string theory and black hole physics. He is a professor at Ohio State University.

Quotes

 * The black hole information paradox is probably the most important issue for fundamental physics today. If we cannot understand its resolution, then we cannot understand how quantum theory and gravity work together. Yet very few people seem to understand how robust the original Hawking arguments are and what exactly it would take to resolve the problem.
 * Mathur, Samir D. "What exactly is the information paradox?." In Physics of Black Holes, pp. 3–48. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2009. (quote from p. 3)


 * The exact description of any physical process must include the effects of quantum gravity. But our experience suggests that there is a separation of scales, so that under suitable conditions we get 'lab physics'; i.e., physics described to good accuracy by quantum fields on gently curved spacetime.


 * In the fuzzball paradigm, the black hole microstates have no interior, and radiate unitarily from their surface through quanta of energy E ∼ T. But quanta with E ≫ T impinging on the fuzzball create large collective excitations of the fuzzball surface. The dynamics of such excitations must be studied as an evolution in superspace, the space of all fuzzball solution |Fi⟩.