Signatures of an Emergent Gravity from Black Hole Entropy

TL;DR

This paper explores the thermodynamic and quantum properties of AdS black holes, revealing a duality in their spectra and thermodynamics, and suggesting a separation between fundamental and effective degrees of freedom in spacetime microstructure.

Contribution

It uncovers a duality linking black hole thermodynamics in different limits and highlights the emergence of gravity signatures from black hole entropy considerations.

Findings

Black hole mass spectrum is equispaced and independent of G at large horizon radius.

Thermodynamics in AdS and Schwarzschild limits are connected via a Bose partition function duality.

Hawking-Page transition distinguishes fundamental from effective degrees of freedom.

Abstract

The existence of a thermodynamic description of horizons indicates that spacetime has a microstructure. While the "fundamental" degrees of freedom remain elusive, quantizing Einstein's gravity provides some clues about their properties. A quantum AdS black hole possesses an equispaced mass spectrum, independent of Newton's constant, $G$, when its horizon radius is large compared to the AdS length. Moreover, the black hole's thermodynamics in this limit is inextricably connected with its thermodynamics in the opposite (Schwarzschild) limit by a duality of the Bose partition function. $G$, absent in the mass spectrum, reemerges in the thermodynamic description through the Schwarzschild limit, which should be viewed as a natural "ground state". It seems that the Hawking-Page phase transition separates fundamental, "particle-like" degrees of freedom from effective, "geometric" ones.