Quantum Structure of Spacetime and Entropy of Schwarschild Black Holes

The gap between a microscopic theory for quantum spacetime and the semiclassical physics of Schwarschild black holes is bridged by treating the black hole spacetimes as highly excited states of a class of nonlocal field theories. All of the black hole thermodynamics are shown to arise from an asymptotic form of the dispersion relation satisfied by the elementary excitations of these field theories. These models involve, quite generically, fields which are (i) smeared over regions of the order of Planck length and (ii) possess correlation functions which have universal short distance behavior.