Luca Ilesiu - The statistical mechanics of near-extremal and near-BPS black holes

Tuesday 16 Feb 2021, 16:00 → 18:00 Europe/Zurich

Zoom only (CERN)

Zoom virtual seminar: Click here to enter room

 

Abstract:

An important open question in black hole thermodynamics is about the existence of a "mass gap" between an extremal black hole and the lightest near-extremal state within a sector of fixed charge. In this talk, I will discuss how to reliably compute the partition function of 4d Reissner-Nordstrom near-extremal black holes at temperature scales comparable to the conjectured gap. I will show that the density of states at fixed charge does not exhibit a gap in the simplest gravitational non-supersymmetric theories; rather, at the expected gap energy scale, we see a continuum of states whose meaning we will extensively discuss. Finally, I will present a similar computation for nearly-BPS black holes in 4d N=2 supergravity. As opposed to their non-supersymmetric counterparts, such black holes do in fact exhibit a gap consistent with various string theory predictions.