Blackholes have challenged accepted fundamental physical properties
as unitarity and locality for some time. Some of their properties are encoded
in elegent mathematics and some four-dimensional properties like the no-hair
theorem seem to get substantial higher dimensional corrections.
Blackholes thermodynamics has provided a fertile arena to understand deep
issues of quantum gravity and quantum field theory. The Bekenstein-Hawking
entropy formula is still far from being fully understood.
String theory has provided new insights in many of these problems.
The entropy of some blackholes was calculated microscopically.
Using the AdS/CFT correspondence relations were found between blackholes
and gauge theories. There seems to be a useful exchange between the holographic
principle and the physics of heavy ion collisions and the deconfinement transition
in QCD. The role of gravity in gauge theories is still largely unexplored.
The aim of the workshop is to bring together experts in the many active areas
of Blackhole physics, to lead to the exchange of point of views and foster further
progress.
