21 May 2024 | Gia Dvali, Juan Sebastián Valbuena-Bermúdez, Michael Zantedeschi
The paper explores the *memory burden* effect, which states that information loaded in a system resists its decay. This effect is particularly prominent in systems with high information storage capacity, such as black holes and solitons, which are referred to as *saturns*. The memory burden effect suppresses further decay of black holes after they have emitted about half of their initial mass, suggesting that light primordial black holes (PBHs) could still exist as viable dark matter candidates. The authors identify various regimes of the memory burden effect in Hamiltonian systems and establish a correspondence between solitons and black holes. They highlight the fundamental differences between stabilization by quantum memory burden and stabilization by long-range classical hair due to spin or electric charge. The paper also predicts a new feature of potential observational interest: the model-independent spread in the masses of initially degenerate PBHs. Additionally, the authors discuss the implications of the memory burden effect in de Sitter space, noting that it sets a consistency upper bound on the duration of classical de Sitter states. The paper concludes by organizing the content into sections that cover the essence of the memory burden effect, its application to solitons and black holes, and numerical results demonstrating the dynamical stabilization of solitons by their memory.The paper explores the *memory burden* effect, which states that information loaded in a system resists its decay. This effect is particularly prominent in systems with high information storage capacity, such as black holes and solitons, which are referred to as *saturns*. The memory burden effect suppresses further decay of black holes after they have emitted about half of their initial mass, suggesting that light primordial black holes (PBHs) could still exist as viable dark matter candidates. The authors identify various regimes of the memory burden effect in Hamiltonian systems and establish a correspondence between solitons and black holes. They highlight the fundamental differences between stabilization by quantum memory burden and stabilization by long-range classical hair due to spin or electric charge. The paper also predicts a new feature of potential observational interest: the model-independent spread in the masses of initially degenerate PBHs. Additionally, the authors discuss the implications of the memory burden effect in de Sitter space, noting that it sets a consistency upper bound on the duration of classical de Sitter states. The paper concludes by organizing the content into sections that cover the essence of the memory burden effect, its application to solitons and black holes, and numerical results demonstrating the dynamical stabilization of solitons by their memory.