Abstract:
Sidestepping the question of what precisely happens at the end of the evaporation in addressing the black hole information issue is misleading because this question bears on assumptions mistakenly taken for granted. I distinguish the three independent regions where quantum gravity becomes relevant in the evolution of a black hole spacetime and summarise the multiple indications that loop quantum gravity gives about each of them. They are consistent with unitarity, no information loss, and no Page curve. The black hole horizon is a trapping horizon but not an event horizon; the von Neumann entropy is larger than the thermodynamic entropy governing the thermodynamics of the black hole before the end of the evaporation. The black hole interior tunnels into a white hole geometry, bounded by a long-living anti-trapped horizon. I show why earlier arguments dismissing the possibility of this scenario do not apply.