Black holes and thermodynamics of non-gravitational theories

This is a thesis/review article that combines some of the results of hep-th/9809061, hep-th/9810224 and hep-th/9901135 with a short discussion of introductory background material; an attempt has been made to present the work in a self-contained manner. The first chapter mostly targets readers who are vaguely familiar with traditional and contemporary string theory. Chapter two discusses in detail the thermodynamics of the 0+1 dimensional Super Yang-Mills (SYM) theory as an illustrative example of the main ideas of the work. The third chapter outlines the phase structures of p+1 dimensional SYM theories on tori for 1<=p<=5, and that of the D1D5 system; we avoid presenting the technical details of the construction of these phase diagrams, focusing instead on the physics of the final results. The last chapter discusses the dynamics of the formation of boosted black holes in strongly coupled SYM theory.