Accelerating Plasma Mirrors to Investigate Black Hole Information Loss Paradox

Abstract

The question of whether Hawking evaporation violates unitarity, and therefore results in the loss of information, remains unresolved since Hawking's seminal discovery. So far the investigations remain mostly theoretical since it is almost impossible to settle this paradox through direct astrophysical black hole observations. It is therefore highly desirable to identify possible laboratory tests for this purpose. Here we point out that relativistic plasma mirror can be accelerated drastically and stopped abruptly by impinging an ultra intense x-ray pulse on a solid plasma target with a density gradient. This is analogous to the late time evolution of black hole Hawking evaporation. Critical issues such as whether black holes emit huge amount of energy at their end stages based on the assumption of black hole unitarity can in principle be addressed.