Black Holes as Critical Point of Quantum Phase Transition

TL;DR

The paper reframes black holes as graviton Bose-Einstein condensates at the quantum critical point of a phase transition, where nearly gapless Bogoliubov modes serve as holographic degrees of freedom governing entropy and information storage. By connecting this picture to a concrete BEC model, it shows that maximal packing and self-sustaining dynamics yield Hawking radiation via quantum depletion and reproduce Bekenstein entropy through mode degeneracy. It then argues that holography emerges generically from large-N BECs at criticality, with AdS/CFT central charges aligning with graviton occupation numbers, suggesting a universal quantum foundation for holography. The work further opens the possibility of tabletop simulations of black hole information processing and extends the framework to other holographic systems and geometries.

Abstract

We reformulate the quantum black hole portrait in the language of modern condensed matter physics. We show that black holes can be understood as a graviton Bose-Einstein condensate at the critical point of a quantum phase transition, identical to what has been observed in systems of cold atoms. The Bogoliubov modes that become degenerate and nearly gapless at this point are the holographic quantum degrees of freedom responsible for the black hole entropy and the information storage. They have no (semi)classical counterparts and become inaccessible in this limit. These findings indicate a deep connection between the seemingly remote systems and suggest a new quantum foundation of holography. They also open an intriguing possibility of simulating black hole information processing in table-top labs.