Black Hole Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

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, through a statistical mechanical description, cast light on some of the deep problems of quantizing gravity. In these lectures, I review what we currently know about black hole thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, suggest a rather speculative "universal" characterization of the underlying states, and describe some key open questions.

35 pages, Springer macros; for the Proceedings of the 4th Aegean Summer School on Black Holes

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Cited by in corpus (23)

• Analogue Gravity
• Modified theories of Gravity: Why, How and What?
• Tunnelling Methods and Hawking's radiation: achievements and prospects
• Black Hole Thermodynamics
• Decoding the Apparent Horizon: A Coarse-Grained Holographic Entropy
• Cosmological Phase Transitions in Warped Space: Gravitational Waves and Collider Signatures
• Thermodynamics of higher dimensional black holes with higher order thermal fluctuations
• Isolated Horizons and Black Hole Entropy in Loop Quantum Gravity
• Static isolated horizons: SU(2) invariant phase space, quantization, and black hole entropy
• The quantum of area $\Delta A=8\pi l_P^2$ and a statistical interpretation of black hole entropy
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• Trouble Finding the Optimal AdS/QCD
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