Black hole absorption cross-sections and the anti-de Sitter -- conformal field theory correspondence

TL;DR

This paper explores the AdS/CFT correspondence by calculating low-energy absorption cross-sections for scalars in near-extremal black holes, confirming the duality's predictions with semi-classical gravity results.

Contribution

It provides explicit calculations of absorption cross-sections in AdS black holes using boundary CFT, demonstrating precise agreement with gravity computations.

Findings

Agreement between CFT and gravity calculations for absorption cross-sections

Validation of AdS/CFT correspondence in black hole physics

Extension of results to fixed scalars and BTZ black holes

Abstract

Recent work has uncovered a correspondence between theories in anti-de Sitter space, and those on its boundary. This has important implications for black holes in string theory which have near-horizon AdS geometries. Using the effective coupling to the boundary conformal field theory, I compute the low-energy, s-wave absorption cross-sections for a minimally coupled scalar in the near-extremal four- and five-dimensional black holes. The results agree precisely with semi-classical gravity calculations. Agreement for fixed scalars, and for the BTZ black hole, is also found.