Schwarzschild Black Holes from Matrix Theory

1997/09/18 by T. Banks, Tom Banks, W. Fischler +5 · 133 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Classical mechanics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #General relativity #Gravitation #Materials science #Mathematical physics #Matrix (chemical analysis) #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Physics #Schwarzschild metric #Schwarzschild radius #Theoretical physics #hep-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.80.226

published in Physical Review Letters 80(2), 226-229 (American Physical Society) · 9 pages, latex; minor typos corrected

arxiv created 1997/09/18 · openalex publication_date 1998/01/12 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06

Abstract

We consider matrix theory compactified on T³ and show that it correctly describes the properties of Schwarzschild black holes in 7+1 dimensions, including the mass-entropy relation, the Hawking temperature, and the physical size, up to numerical factors of order unity. The most economical description involves setting the cutoff N in the discretized light-cone quantization to be of order the black hole entropy. A crucial ingredient necessary for our work is the recently proposed equation of state for 3+1 dimensional supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with 16 supercharges. We give detailed arguments for the range of validity of this equation following the methods of Horowitz and Polchinski.

Citations

• String theory and classical absorption by three-branes
• World-volume approach to absorption by non-dilatonic branes
• Dirichlet Branes and Ramond-Ramond Charges
• Mtheory as a matrix model: A conjecture
• Microscopic Origin of the Bekenstein-Hawking Entropy

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