English

Black Holes in String Theory

High Energy Physics - Theory 2008-02-03 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

This thesis is devoted to trying to find a microscopic quantum description of black holes. We consider black holes in string theory which is a quantum theory of gravity. We find that the ``area law'' black hole entropy for extremal and near-extremal charged black holes arises from counting microscopic configurations. We study black holes in five and four spacetime dimensions. We calculate the Hawking temperature and give a physical picture of the Hawking decay process. Hopefully, the reader will find here a moderately self contained review of D-branes and string theory applied to black hole physics.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/9607235,
  title  = {Black Holes in String Theory},
  author = {Juan M. Maldacena},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/9607235},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

Minor changes in the references. 80 pages, 8 figures, uses harvmac

R2 v1 2026-07-22T16:00:46.425Z