English

`Thermodynamics' of Minimal Surfaces and Entropic Origin of Gravity

High Energy Physics - Theory 2014-11-21 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

Deformations of minimal surfaces lying in constant time slices in static space-times are studied. An exact and universal formula for a change of the area of a minimal surface under shifts of nearby point-like particles is found. It allows one to introduce a local temperature on the surface and represent variations of its area in a thermodynamical form by assuming that the entropy in the Planck units equals the quarter of the area. These results provide a strong support to a recent hypothesis that gravity has an entropic origin, the minimal surfaces being a sort of holographic screens. The gravitational entropy also acquires a definite physical meaning related to quantum entanglement of fundamental degrees of freedom across the screen.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1006.2623,
  title  = {`Thermodynamics' of Minimal Surfaces and Entropic Origin of Gravity},
  author = {Dmitri V. Fursaev},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1006.2623},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

12 pages, 1 figure