Introduction to black hole thermodynamics

Albert Einstein Institute, Potsdam, 6-7 December 2023

These pages accompany Éric Gourgoulhon's lectures at the Albert Einstein Institute on 6 and 7 December 2023.

The year 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark article The four laws of black hole mechanics by James Bardeen, Brandon Carter and Stephen Hawking, which set the bases of black hole thermodynamics. This topic plays an important role in black hole physics and is pivotal in approaches to quantum gravity. The lectures will focus on classical (non-quantum) aspects, though. On the other hand, the framework will be that of a generic metric theory of gravity (not necessarily general relativity) and the spacetime dimension will be kept general, so that the results apply to modified theories of gravity and higher-dimensional spacetimes. Beyond black hole thermodynamics, the lectures can serve as an introduction to various topics that are important for black hole physics, like the geometry of null hypersurfaces, Killing horizons, null geodesic congruences, and the concepts of mass and angular momentum in gravity.

Schedule

  1. Definition and main properties of black holes, Wednesday 6 December, 10:00 am - 12:00 in room 0.01
  2. Killing horizons and the zeroth law, Wednesday 6 December, 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm in room 0.63
  3. Global quantities and the first law, Thursday 7 December, 10:00 am - 12:00 in room 0.01
  4. Evolution of black holes and the second law, Thursday 7 December, 1:30 pm - 3:30 pm in room 0.01

The prerequisite is having followed an introductory course of general relativity, at the level of a master's degree.

You will find here: