D-brane approach to black hole quantum mechanics

Curtis Gove Callan, Juan M. Maldacena

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

557 Scopus citations

Abstract

Strominger and Vafa have used D-brane technology to identify and precisely count the degenerate quantum states responsible for the entropy of certain extremal, BPS-saturated black holes. Here we give a Type-II D-brane description of a class of extremal and non-extremal five-dimensional Reissner-Nordström solutions and identify a corresponding set of degenerate D-brane configurations. We use this information to do a string theory calculation of the entropy, radiation rate and "Hawking" temperature. The results agree perfectly with standard Hawking results for the corresponding nearly extremal Reissner-Nordström black holes. Although these calculations suffer from open-string strong coupling problems, we give some reasons to believe that they are nonetheless qualitatively reliable. In this optimistic scenario there would be no "information loss" in black hole quantum evolution.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)591-608
Number of pages18
JournalNuclear Physics B
Volume472
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 29 1996

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Keywords

  • Black holes
  • Quantum aspects of black holes
  • String theory

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