Related papers: Pure state quantum statistical mechanics and black…
I present in detail the case for regarding black hole thermodynamics as having a statistical-mechanical explanation in exact parallel with the statistical-mechanical explanation believed to underly the thermodynamics of other systems. (Here…
Quantum theory of geometry, developed recently in the framework of non-perturbative quantum gravity, is used in an attempt to explain thermodynamics of Schwarzschild black holes on the basis of a microscopical (quantum) description of the…
The project concerns the interplay among quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, in isolated quantum systems. The underlying goal is to improve our understanding of the concept of thermal equilibrium in quantum systems.…
We have known for more than thirty years that black holes behave as thermodynamic systems, radiating as black bodies with characteristic temperatures and entropies. This behavior is not only interesting in its own right; it could also,…
I review the recent progress in providing a statistical foundation for black hole thermodynamics. In the context of string theory, one can now identify and count quantum states associated with black holes. One can also compute the analog of…
A new kind of quantum statistics which interpolates between Bose and Fermi statistics is proposed beginning with the assumption that the quantum state of a many-particle system is a functional on the internal space of the particles. The…
We consider a quantum system A U B made up of degrees of freedom that can be partitioned into spatially disjoint regions A and B. When the full system is in a pure state in which regions A and B are entangled, the quantum mechanics of…
We consider a class of non-equilibrium pure states, which are generally present in an isolated quantum statistical system. These are states of the form $|\Psi\rangle=e^{-{\beta H \over 2}} U e^{{\beta H \over 2}} |\Psi_0\rangle$, where $U$…
Black holes exist all over our Universe, possessing a very wide range of masses. At the moment, they serve as a probe to test general relativity at astrophysical scales, but in the future they may also give us information about gravity at…
In this review we describe statistical mechanics of quantum systems in the presence of a Killing horizon and compare statistical-mechanical and one-loop contributions to black hole entropy. Studying these questions was motivated by attempts…
Some basic features of black-hole statistical mechanics are investigated, assuming that black holes respect the principles of quantum mechanics. Care is needed in defining an entropy S_bh corresponding to the number of microstates of a…
Polymer quantization is a non-standard representation of the quantum mechanics that inspired by loop quantum gravity. To study the associated statistical mechanics, one needs to find microstates' energies which are eigenvalues of the…
The concept of entropy is fundamental to thermalization, yet appears at odds with basic principles in quantum mechanics. Statistical mechanics relies on the maximization of entropy for a system at thermal equilibrium. However, an isolated…
We formulate statistical mechanics based on a pure quantum state, which we call a ``thermal pure quantum (TPQ) state''. A single TPQ state gives not only equilibrium values of mechanical variables, such as magnetization and correlation…
Black holes are thermodynamic objects, but despite recent progress, the ultimate statistical mechanical origin of black hole temperature and entropy remains mysterious. Here I summarize an approach in which the entropy is viewed as arising…
The future apparent horizon of a black hole develops large stress energy due to quantum effects, unless the outgoing modes are in a thermal density matrix at the local Hawking temperature. It is shown for generic pure states that the…
The capabilities of a new approach towards the foundations of Statistical Mechanics are explored. The approach is genuine quantum in the sense that statistical behavior is a consequence of objective quantum uncertainties due to entanglement…
Systems at finite temperature make up the vast majority of realistic physical scenarios. Indeed, although zero temperature is often accompanied by simpler mathematics, the richness in physical results is evident when one considers the…
A coarse-grained version of the effective action is used to study the thermodynamics of black holes, interpolating from largest to smallest masses. The physical parameter of the black hole are linked to the running couplings by…
In the early 1970s it is was realized that there is a striking formal analogy between the Laws of black-hole mechanics and the Laws of classical thermodynamics. Before the discovery of Hawking radiation, however, it was generally thought…