Black hole entropy from non-perturbative gauge theory

TL;DR

This paper develops a mean-field approximation for the quantum mechanics of D0-branes at finite temperature, successfully matching black hole entropy and providing insights into the spectrum and horizon structure.

Contribution

It introduces a non-perturbative approximation scheme for D0-brane quantum mechanics that reproduces black hole entropy and explores the excitation spectrum and horizon identification.

Findings

Entropy matches Bekenstein-Hawking entropy

Clear separation between light and heavy excitations

Proposed method to identify black hole horizon

Abstract

We present the details of a mean-field approximation scheme for the quantum mechanics of N D0-branes at finite temperature. The approximation can be applied at strong 't Hooft coupling. We find that the resulting entropy is in good agreement 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. We study the spectrum of single-string excitations within the quantum mechanics, and find evidence for a clear separation between light and heavy degrees of freedom. We also present a way of identifying the black hole horizon.