Black holes have more states than those giving the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy: a simple argument

Abstract

It is often assumed that the maximum number of independent states a black hole may contain is $N_{BH}=e^{S_{BH}}$, where $S_{BH}=A/4$ is the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy and $A$ the horizon area in Planck units. I present a simple and straightforward argument showing that the number of states that can be distinguished by local observers inside the hole must be greater than this number.

arXiv comment3 pages. 1 figure

References in corpus (4)

• Information in Black Hole Radiation
• Black Hole Entropy from Near-Horizon Microstates
• The Stretched Horizon and Black Hole Complementarity
• Black Hole Entropy from Loop Quantum Gravity

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