Survival of the annihilation-to-nothing mechanism under fundamental quantum effects

Ascertain whether Yeom’s annihilation-to-nothing interpretation of the Wheeler–DeWitt wave function in black-hole interiors persists when more fundamental quantum effects beyond low-energy effective field theory are included, specifically determining if the characteristic vanishing behavior of the wave function survives in a UV-complete quantum gravity.

Background

Yeom and collaborators proposed the annihilation-to-nothing scenario in the WDW framework, where two classical spacetime branches annihilate inside the horizon, corresponding to a vanishing wave function along a specific hypersurface.

This paper extends the analysis by adding higher-curvature corrections and shows the vanishing behavior does not survive within the EFT regime. The authors explicitly note that it remains an open question whether the mechanism persists once more fundamental (UV) quantum effects are incorporated.