Classical and Quantum Thermodynamic Systems in Curved Spacetime

TL;DR

This thesis explores classical and quantum thermodynamic systems in curved spacetime, focusing on matter shells and quantum fields near black holes, providing new insights into black hole entropy and quantum effects in gravity.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed study of finite-temperature matter shells in curved spacetime and their relation to black hole thermodynamics, along with new results on quantum fields in black hole backgrounds.

Findings

Derived a plausible value for extremal black hole entropy

Calculated vacuum polarization effects in black hole geometries

Developed new formulas for transcendental functions in quantum field analysis

Abstract

Systems at finite temperature make up the vast majority of realistic physical scenarios. Indeed, although zero temperature is often accompanied by simpler mathematics, the richness in physical results is evident when one considers the system to have temperature and even more so if the background geometry is curved. This thesis will be dedicated to the study of this type of physical systems, where thermodynamics and general relativity equally contribute to the dynamics. The first part will be devoted to the study of classical thermodynamic systems in curved spacetime, namely thin matter shells at finite temperature. These objects partition spacetime into separate pieces, and their very existence is conditioned by the so-called junctions conditions. The latter conditions allow us to carefully study both the mechanical and thermodynamics of the shell and, in particular, they give rise to a well-defined notion of entropy. The shell can then be taken to its black hole limit, providing an alternative way to study black hole thermodynamics. We will do this for different geometries, obtaining as byproduct a plausible answer for the debated value of the entropy of an extremal black hole. In the second part we shall review the standard formalisms to study QFT in curved spacetimes, in order to explore quantum properties of thermodynamic systems in the presence of gravity. Massive quantum scalar fields at finite temperature will be the systems of choice, whereby various instances of vacuum polarisation will be calculated in a variety of black hole geometries. Both numerical and analytic results will be obtained, and new addition formulas for a certain class of transcendental functions will be derived. This part will culminate with a careful numerical study of symmetry restoration of a self-interacting scalar field around a charged black hole, where we verify insights present in the literature.