Black Hole Thermodynamics

TL;DR

This paper reviews the development of black hole thermodynamics, highlighting its implications for quantum gravity, and discusses unresolved issues like microstates, universality, and information loss.

Contribution

It summarizes multiple approaches to understanding black hole thermodynamics and discusses open problems in the field.

Findings

Black holes radiate as black bodies.

Multiple methods confirm thermodynamic properties of black holes.

Open questions remain about microstates and information paradox.

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.