How to interpret black hole entropy?

One of the challenges of today's theoretical physics is to fully understand the connection between a geometrical object like area and a thermostatistical one like entropy, since area behaves analogously like entropy. The Bekenstein bound suggests a universal constraint for the entropy of a region in a flat space. The Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of black holes satisfies the Bekenstein bound conjecture. In this paper we have shown that when we use important non-Gaussian entropie...

It is known that the entanglement entropy of a scalar field, found by tracing over its degrees of freedom inside a sphere of radius ${\cal R}$, is proportional to the area of the sphere (and not its volume). This suggests that the origin of black hole entropy, also proportional to its horizon area, may lie in the entanglement between the degrees of freedom inside and outside the horizon. We examine this proposal carefully by including excited states, to check probable deviati...

In this article, we will discuss a Lorentzian sector calculation of the entropy of a minimally coupled scalar field in the Schwarzschild black hole background using the brick wall model of 't Hooft. In the original article, the WKB approximation was used for the modes that are globally stationary. In a previous article, we found that the WKB quantization rule together with a proper counting of the states, leads to a new expression of the scalar field entropy which is not prop...

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 from ``would-be pure gauge'' degrees of freedom that become dynamical at the horizon. For the (2+1)-dimensional black hole, these degrees of freedom can be counted, and yield the correct Bekenstein-Hawking entropy; the corresponding problem...

In this review, we describe recent progress on the black hole information problem that involves a new understanding of how to calculate the entropy of Hawking radiation. We show how the method for computing gravitational fine-grained entropy, developed over the past 15 years, can be extended to capture the entropy of Hawking radiation. This technique reveals large corrections needed for the entropy to be consistent with unitary black hole evaporation.

Several results of black holes thermodynamics can be considered as firmly founded and formulated in a very general manner. From this starting point we analyse in which way these results may give us the opportunity to gain a better understanding in the thermodynamics of ordinary systems for which a pre-relativistic description is sufficient. First, we investigated the possibility to introduce an alternative definition of the entropy basically related to a local definition of t...

In this article we derive the Bekenstein-Hawking formula of black hole entropy from a single string. We consider a open string in the Rindler metric which can be obtained in the large mass limit from the Schwarzschild black hole metric. By solving the field equations we find a nontrivial solution with the exact value of the Hawking temperature. We see that this solution gives us the Bekenstein-Hawking formula of black hole entropy to leading order of approximation. This strin...

In this paper we calculate the entropy of a thin spherical shell that contracts reversibly from infinity down to its event horizon. We find that, for a broad class of equations of state, the entropy of a non-extremal shell is one-quarter of its area in the black hole limit. The considerations in this paper suggest the following operational definition for the entropy of a black hole: $S_{BH}$ is the equilibrium thermodynamic entropy that would be stored in the material which g...

This paper has been withdrawn by the author due to a crucial error

I review various proposals for the nature of black hole entropy and for the mechanism behind the operation of the generalized second law. I stress the merits of entanglement entropy {\tenit qua\/} black hole entropy, and point out that, from an operational viewpoint, entanglement entropy is perfectly finite. Problems with this identification such as the multispecies problem and the trivialization of the information puzzle are mentioned. This last leads me to associate black h...