Abstract
Improved semiclassical techniques are developed and applied to a treatment of a real scalar field in a -dimensional gravitational background. This analysis, leading to a derivation of the thermodynamics of black holes, is based on the simultaneous use of (i) a near-horizon description of the scalar field in terms of conformal quantum mechanics; (ii) a novel generalized WKB framework; and (iii) curved-spacetime phase-space methods. In addition, this improved semiclassical approach is shown to be asymptotically exact in the presence of hierarchical expansions of a near-horizon type. Most importantly, this analysis further supports the claim that the thermodynamics of black holes is induced by their near-horizon conformal invariance.
- Received 5 January 2005
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.71.124040
©2005 American Physical Society