Statistical Mechanics of Extended Black Objects

TL;DR

This paper extends black hole statistical mechanics to black p-branes in 10D, deriving their state degeneracy, analyzing their microcanonical ensemble, and exploring their scattering properties and relation to quantum branes.

Contribution

It provides a general expression for the Euclidean action of black p-branes and analyzes their statistical mechanics, stability, and scattering in a unified framework.

Findings

Black p-branes obey the bootstrap condition.

Stable configurations involve a single black object carrying most energy.

Scattering amplitudes satisfy crossing symmetry.

Abstract

We extend the considerations of a previous paper on black hole statistical mechanics to the case of black extended objects such as black strings and black membranes in 10-dimensional space-time. We obtain a general expression for the Euclidean action of quantum black p-branes and derive their corresponding degeneracy of states. The statistical mechanics of a gas of black p-branes is then analyzed in the microcanonical ensemble. As in the case of black holes, the equilibrium state is not thermal and the stable configuration is the one for which a single black object carries most of the energy. Again, neutral black p-branes obey the bootstrap condition and it is then possible to argue that their scattering amplitudes satisfy crossing symmetry. Finally, arguments identifying quantum black p-branes with ordinary quantum branes of different dimensionality are presented.