Related papers: Black Hole Entropy from Horizon Conformal Field Th…
Black holes behave as thermodynamic systems, and a central task of any quantum theory of gravity is to explain these thermal properties. A statistical mechanical description of black hole entropy once seemed remote, but today we suffer an…
To derive black hole thermodynamics in any quantum theory of gravity, one must introduce constraints that ensure that a black hole is actually present. For a large class of black holes, the imposition of such ``horizon constraints'' allows…
To explain black hole thermodynamics in quantum gravity, one must introduce constraints to ensure that a black hole is actually present. I show that for a large class of black holes, such ``horizon constraints'' allow the use of conformal…
Black hole entropy appears to be ``universal''--many independent calculations, involving models with very different microscopic degrees of freedom, all yield the same density of states. I discuss the proposal that this universality comes…
To ask a question about a black hole in quantum gravity, one must restrict initial or boundary data to ensure that a black hole is actually present. For two-dimensional dilaton gravity, and probably a much wider class of theories, I show…
To ask a question about a black hole in quantum gravity, one must restrict initial or boundary data to ensure that a black hole is actually present. For two-dimensional dilaton gravity, and probably a much wider class of theories as well,…
A key test of any quantum theory of gravity is its ability to reproduce the known thermodynamic properties of black holes. A statistical mechanical description of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy once seemed remote, but today we suffer an…
It is no longer considered surprising that black holes have temperatures and entropies. What remains surprising, though, is the universality of these thermodynamic properties: their exceptionally simple and general form, and the fact that…
Black holes behave as thermodynamic objects, and it is natural to ask for an underlying "statistical mechanical" explanation in terms of microscopic degrees of freedom. I summarize attempts to describe these degrees of freedom in terms of a…
On a manifold with boundary, the constraint algebra of general relativity may acquire a central extension, which can be computed using covariant phase space techniques. When the boundary is a (local) Killing horizon, a natural set of…
Although we have convincing evidence that a black hole bears an entropy proportional to its surface (horizon) area, the ``statistical mechanical'' explanation of this entropy remains unknown. Two basic questions in this connection are: what…
Restricted to a black hole horizon, the ``gauge'' algebra of surface deformations in general relativity contains a Virasoro subalgebra with a calculable central charge. The fields in any quantum theory of gravity must transform accordingly,…
Near an event horizon, the action of general relativity acquires a new asymptotic conformal symmetry. Using two-dimensional dilaton gravity as a test case, I show that this symmetry results in a chiral Virasoro algebra with a calculable…
The thermodynamics of black holes is shown to be directly induced by their near-horizon conformal invariance. This behavior is exhibited using a scalar field as a probe of the black hole gravitational background, for a general class of…
It is pointed out that the entanglement entropy of quantum fields near the horizon of a two-dimensional black hole can be derived by means of the conformal field theory. This can be done in a way analogous to the computation of the entropy…
The analytic structure of solutions to the Klein-Gordon equation in a black hole background, as represented by monodromy data, is intimately related to black hole thermodynamics. It encodes the "hidden conformal symmetry" of a non-extremal…
Standard thermodynamic treatments of quantum field theory in the presence of black-hole backgrounds reproduce the black hole entropy by usually specializing to the leading order of the heat-kernel or the high-temperature expansion. By…
Although we know that black holes are characterized by a temperature and an entropy, we do not yet have a satisfactory microscopic ``statistical mechanical'' explanation for black hole thermodynamics. I describe a new approach that…
I present a viewpoint on black hole thermodynamics according to which the entropy: derives from horizon "degrees of freedom"; is finite because the deep structure of spacetime is discrete; is "objective" thanks to the distinguished coarse…
In this thesis the research work, done by the author in the three years of his Ph.D. study, will be exposed. The role of two dimensional conformal field theories will be discussed. Different approaches will be studied in order to find a…