Emergent horizon, Hawking radiation and chaos in the collapsed polymer model of a black hole

Abstract: We have proposed that the interior of a macroscopic Schwarzschild black hole (BH) consists of highly excited, long, closed, interacting strings and, as such, can be modeled as a collapsed polymer. It was previously shown that the scaling relations of the collapsed-polymer model agree with those of the BH. The current paper further substantiates this proposal with an investigation into some of its dynamical consequences. In particular, we show that the model predicts, without relying on gravitational effects, an emergent horizon. We further show that the horizon fluctuates quantum mechanically as it should and that the strength of the fluctuations is inversely proportional to the BH entropy. It is then demonstrated that the emission of Hawking radiation is realized microscopically by the quantum-induced escape of small pieces of string, with the rate of escape and the energy per emitted piece both parametrically matching the Hawking temperature. We also show, using standard methods from statistical mechanics and chaos theory, how our model accounts for some other known properties of BHs. These include the accepted results for the scrambling time and the viscosity-to-entropy ratio, which in our model apply not only at the horizon but throughout the BH interior.