Related papers: Horizon energy as the boost boundary term in gener…
I describe how gravitational entropy is intimately connected with the concept of gravitational heat, expressed as the difference between the total and free energies of a given gravitational system. From this perspective one can compute…
In this paper we treat the black hole horizon as a physical boundary to the spacetime and study its dynamics following from the Gibbons-Hawking-York boundary term. Using the Kerr black hole as an example we derive an effective action that…
We show that Rindler horizons are entropic screens and gravity is an entropic force in Rindler space by deriving the Verlinde entropy formula from the focusing of light due to a mass close to the horizon. Consequently, gravity is also…
Motivated by conventional gauge theories, we consider a theory of gravity in which the Einstein-Hilbert action is replaced by a term that is quadratic in the Riemann tensor. We focus on cosmological solutions to the field equations in flat,…
Recent work has studied the thermodynamics of gravity subjected to conformal boundary conditions, where the trace of the extrinsic curvature $K$ and the conformal class of metrics are kept fixed. The case $K < 0$ seems tied to solutions…
It was shown recently that, in the case of Schwarschild black hole, one can obtain the correct thermodynamic relations by studying a model quantum system and using a particular duality transformation. We study this approach further for the…
In Einstein's gravity, the entropy of horizons is proportional to their area. Several arguments given in the literature suggest that, in this context, both area and entropy should be quantized with an equally spaced spectrum for large…
The decade-old formulation of the isolated horizon classically and within loop quantum gravity, and the extraction of the microcanonical entropy of such a horizon from this formulation, is reviewed, in view of recent renewed interest. There…
The generalized free energy landscape plays a pivotal role in understanding black hole thermodynamics and phase transitions. In general relativity, one can directly derive the generalized free energy from the contributions of black holes…
The well known relation of Einstein relativistic energy for a free particle is extended to cover the total relativistic energy of a bound particle by calculating the relativistic potential energy. A non dissipative harmonic oscillator…
Traditional derivations of general relativity from the graviton degrees of freedom assume space-time Lorentz covariance as an axiom. In this essay, we survey recent evidence that general relativity is the unique spatially-covariant…
Thermodynamics on the horizon of a flat universe at late times is studied in holographic cosmological models that assume an associated entropy on the horizon. In such models, a $\Lambda(t)$ model similar to a time-varying $\Lambda(t)$…
The classical Hamiltonian for a chargeless and massless particle in a very near horizon region is shown to be of the form $H\sim xp$ as long as radial motion is concerned. This is demonstrated explicitly for static spherically symmetric…
Since the seminal work of Verlinde, the idea that gravity may be an emergent force of entropic origin has gained widespread attention. Many generalizations of this key idea have been considered in the literature, starting from well-known…
We refine and extend a programme initiated by one of the current authors [Science 276 (1997) 88; Phys. Rev. D56 (1997) 7578] advocating the use of the classical energy conditions of general relativity in a cosmological setting to place very…
I modify the quasilocal energy formalism of Brown and York into a purely Hamiltonian form. As part of the reformulation, I remove their restriction that the time evolution of the boundary of the spacetime be orthogonal to the leaves of the…
We solve Einstein vacuum equations in a spacetime region up to the "center" of gravitational collapse. Within this region, we construct a sequence of marginally outer trapped surfaces (MOTS) with areas going to zero. These MOTS form a…
We analyze the thermodynamic properties of the apparent horizon of Friedmann-Lema\^itre-Roberson-Walker (FLRW) spacetimes in Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity. We use the generalized definition of entropy for gravity theories in higher…
Traditional approaches to energy-momentum localization led to reference frame dependent pseudotensors. The more modern idea is quasilocal energy-momentum. We take a Hamiltonian approach. The Hamiltonian boundary term gives not only the…
A key tenet of general relativity is the dynamical nature of space-time, ideally represented as an initial value problem. Here we explore the variational formulation of classical Einstein-Hilbert gravity as initial value problem by…