Brick-By-Brick: A Construction of ’t Hooft’s Brick Wall
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Date
2020
Authors
Gilman, Narynbek
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Nazarbayev University School of Sciences and Humanities
Abstract
A pedagogical construction and review, aimed at the undergraduate level, are given of the brick wall model. The brick wall is a finite region just outside the event horizon of a black hole. It is introduced in order to calculate the entropy of the collapsed star. The statistical origin of the entropy is still unknown, but the brick wall model offers an elementary exercise in counting quantum field solutions to arrive at the famous entropy-area result. The brick wall is a cut-off, effectively regularizing an otherwise divergent result. The model encompasses many fields of physics, including general relativity, quantum theory and statistical mechanics. Its multidisciplinary approach hints at what a more sophisticated solution will look like to the problem of a statistical explanation of the entropy of black holes.