Heat as an inertial force: A quantum equivalence principle

The firewall was introduced into black hole evaporation scenarios as a deus ex machina designed to break entanglements and preserve unitarity (Almheiri et.al., 2013). Here we show that the firewall actually exists and does break entanglements, but only in the context of a virtual reality for observers stationed near the horizon, who are following the long-term evolution of the hole. These observers are heated by acceleration radiation at the Unruh temperature and see pair creation at the horizon as a high-energy phenomenon. The objective reality is very different. We argue that Hawking pair creation is entirely a low-energy process in which entanglements never arise. The Hawking particles materialize as low-energy excitations with typical wavelength considerably larger than the black hole radius. They thus emerge into a very non-uniform environment inimical to entanglement-formation.