Probing black hole entropy via entanglement

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Authors: Shuxuan Ying
Cited by: 1
References: 16

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a method to extract the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of D -dimensional black holes using the entanglement entropy of a lower-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT). This approach relies on two key observations. On the gravitational side, the near-horizon geometry of extremal black holes is AdS 2 , and the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy is entirely determined by this two-dimensional geometry. Moreover, the higher-dimensional spherical part of the black hole metric is absorbed into the D -dimensional Newton’s constant G N ( D ) , which can be effectively reduced to a two-dimensional Newton’s constant G N ( 2 ) . On the field theory side, the entanglement entropy of two disconnected one-dimensional conformal quantum mechanics (CQM 1 ) can be calculated. According to the Ryu-Takayanagi (RT) prescription, this entanglement entropy computes the area of the minimal surface in the AdS 2 geometry. Since the near-horizon region of the black hole and the emergent spacetime derived from the entanglement entropy share the same Penrose diagram—with both the black hole event horizon and the RT surface corresponding to specific points on this diagram—the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy can be probed via entanglement entropy when these points coincide. This result explicitly demonstrates that the entanglement across the event horizon is the fundamental origin of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Black Holes and Theoretical Physics Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect Quantum many-body systems

Publication details

Journal / source
Nuclear Physics B
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Volume
1025
Pages
117377–117377
Publication date
3 March 2026
Language
EN