1998/07/17 by Parthasarathi Majumdar, Majumdar, Parthasarathi
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.gr-qc/9807045
13 pages, Revtex, 5 eps figures. Invited talk at National Symposium on Trends and Perspectives in Theoretical Physics, IACS, Calcutta, India, April, 1998. One reference added
openalex publication_date 1998/07/17 · arxiv created 1998/07/29 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
An elementary introduction is given to the problem of black hole entropy as formulated by Bekenstein and Hawking. The information theoretic basis of Bekenstein's formulation is briefly reviewed and compared with Hawking's approach. The issue of calculating the entropy by actual counting of microstates is taken up next within two currently popular approaches to quantum gravity, viz., string theory and canonical quantum gravity. The treatment of the former assay is confined to a few remarks, mainly of a critical nature, while some of the computational techniques of the latter approach are elaborated. We conclude by trying to find commonalities between these two rather disparate directions of work.