English

Black Hole Thermodynamics

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2015-08-27 v2

Abstract

The discovery in the early 1970s that black holes radiate as black bodies has radically affected our understanding of general relativity, and offered us some early hints about the nature of quantum gravity. In this chapter I will review the discovery of black hole thermodynamics and summarize the many independent ways of obtaining the thermodynamic and (perhaps) statistical mechanical properties of black holes. I will then describe some of the remaining puzzles, including the nature of the quantum microstates, the problem of universality, and the information loss paradox.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1410.1486,
  title  = {Black Hole Thermodynamics},
  author = {S. Carlip},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1410.1486},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

Invited review article. A few parts based on an earlier review, arXiv:0807.4520. To appear in Int. J. Mod. Phys. D and in "One Hundred Years of General Relativity: Cosmology and Gravity," edited by Wei-Tou Ni (World Scientific, Singapore, 2015). v2: added references and appendix

R2 v1 2026-06-22T06:14:20.052Z