Holographic Black Hole Formation and Scrambling in Time-Ordered Correlators

We describe a holographic mechanism for black hole formation via the collision of two shock waves in three-dimensional anti–de Sitter spacetime. In the dual conformal field theory, a two-shock-wave state corresponds to the insertion of two boosted “precursor” operators in complementary Rindler patches. Their operator product expansion is initially described by a universal mean-field spectrum of exchanged states, which is dominated by operator dimensions that grow exponentially in the boost parameter. We propose their mean value as diagnosing the mass of the collision product in the bulk. It crosses the conformal field theory heavy state threshold after two scrambling times, in accordance with expectations about black hole formation in general relativity. Our analysis also allows us to identify the scrambling characteristics usually associated with out-of-time-order correlation functions, using only the internal composition of thermal in-time-order correlators.