Never Judge a Black Hole by Its Area

Is There a General Area Theorem for Black Holes?

The general validity of the area law for black holes is still an open problem. We first show in detail how to complete the usually incompletely stated text-book proofs under the assumption of piecewise $C^2$-smoothness for the surface of the black hole. Then we prove that a black hole surface necessarily contains points where it is not $C^1$ (called ``cusps'') at any time before caustics of the horizon generators show up, like e.g. in merging processes. This implies that caustics never disappear in the past and that black holes without initial cusps will never develop such. Hence black holes w…

Black hole entropy quantization

Ever since the pioneer works of Bekenstein and Hawking, black hole entropy has been known to have a quantum origin. Furthermore, it has long been argued by Bekenstein that entropy should be quantized in discrete (equidistant) steps given its identification with horizon area in (semi-)classical general relativity and the properties of area as an adiabatic invariant. This lead to the suggestion that black hole area should also be quantized in equidistant steps to account for the discrete black hole entropy. Here we shall show that loop quantum gravity, in which area is {\it not} quantized in equ…

Nonthermal correction to black hole spectroscopy

Area spectrum of black holes have been obtained via various methods such as quasinormal modes, adiabatic invariance and angular momentum. Among those methods, calculations were done by assuming black holes in thermal equilibrium. Nevertheless, black holes in the asymptotically flat space usually have negative specific heat and therefore tend to stay away from thermal equilibrium. Even for those black holes with positive specific heat, temperature may still not be well defined in the process of radiation, due to the back reaction of decreasing mass. Respect to these facts, it is very likely tha…

黑洞热力学第二定律

Second law of black hole thermodynamics

本文提出用“负”量子条件熵替代Bekenstein-Hawking面积定律中的简单熵，推导出适用于任意黑洞且可利用事件视界望远镜检验的黑洞热力学第二定律。

Notes on the Area Theorem

Hawking's area theorem can be understood from a quasi-stationary process in which a black hole accretes $positive$ energy matter, ``independent of the details of the gravity action''. I use this process to study the dynamics of the ``inner'' as well as the outer horizons for various black holes which include the recently discovered exotic black holes and three-dimensional black holes in higher derivative gravities as well as the usual BTZ black hole and the Kerr black hole in four dimensions. I find that the area for the inner horizon ``can decrease'', rather than increase, with the quasi-stat…

Imprint of black hole area quantization and Hawking radiation on inspiraling binary

We study the potential of gravitational wave astronomy to observe the quantum aspects of black holes. According to Bekenstein's quantization, we find that black hole area discretization can have observable imprints on the gravitational wave signal from an inspiraling binary black hole. We study the impact of quantization on tidal heating. We model the absorption lines and compute gravitational wave flux due to tidal heating in such a case. By including the quantization we find the dephasing of the gravitational wave, to our knowledge it has never been done before. We discuss the observability …