Localized Collisions and the Black Hole Interior

We study collisions of localized shockwaves behind the horizon of the eternal AdS black hole. We give a holographic boundary description in terms of the overlap of two growing perturbations in a shared quantum circuit. Due to a competition between different physical effects, the circuit analysis shows dependence on the transverse locations and exhibits four regimes of qualitatively different behaviors. On the gravity side we study properties of the post-collision geometry, using exact calculations in simple setups and estimations in more general circumstances. We show that the circuit analysis offers intuitive and surprisingly accurate predictions about gravity computations involving non-linear features of general relativity. Based on work with Ying Zhao [2202.04661].