Black Hole Thermodynamics from Calculations in Strongly-Coupled Gauge Theory

TL;DR

This paper develops an approximation method for the quantum mechanics of D0-branes at finite temperature, showing that the entropy matches the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of a corresponding black hole, supporting gauge/gravity duality.

Contribution

Introduces a novel approximation scheme for strongly-coupled D0-brane quantum mechanics that reproduces black hole entropy, validating the gauge/gravity duality conjecture.

Findings

Entropy from quantum mechanics matches black hole entropy

Supports the gauge/gravity duality in string theory

Provides a model for black hole density matrix in quantum mechanics

Abstract

We develop an approximation scheme for the quantum mechanics of N D0-branes at finite temperature in the 't Hooft large-N limit. The entropy of the quantum mechanics calculated using this approximation agrees well with the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of a ten-dimensional non-extremal black hole with 0-brane charge. This result is in accord with the duality conjectured by Itzhaki, Maldacena, Sonnenschein and Yankielowicz. Our approximation scheme provides a model for the density matrix which describes a black hole in the strongly-coupled quantum mechanics.