Pith. sign in

REVIEW 4 cited by

Black holes, brick walls and the Boulware state

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv gr-qc/9806012 v2 pith:7EDDZPCS submitted 1998-06-03 gr-qc hep-th

classification gr-qchep-th
keywords modelbekenstein-hawkingboulwarebrick-wallenergyentropylargereservations
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
0 comments
read the original abstract

The brick-wall model seeks to explain the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy as a wall-contribution to the thermal energy of ambient quantum fields raised to the Hawking temperature. Reservations have been expressed concerning the self-consistency of this model. For example, it predicts large thermal energy densities near the wall, producing a substantial mass-correction and, presumably, a large gravitational back-reaction. We re-examine this model and conclude that these reservations are unfounded once the ground state---the Boulware state---is correctly identified. We argue that the brick-wall model and the Gibbons-Hawking instanton (which ascribes a topological origin to the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy) are mutually exclusive, alternative descriptions (complementary in the sense of Bohr) of the same physics.

Discussion (0). Sign in to comment.

Forward citations

Cited by 4 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. OpenAlex reports about 93 citations worldwide. Full citation record

  1. Diamonds in the Bulk and Large-$N$ Scaling in AdS/CFT

    hep-th 2026-01 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Bulk field algebras of causal diamonds in AdS/CFT require a double-scaling limit, so sub-AdS-radius distances are not described by bulk QFT.

  2. Modular quantization and black holes

    hep-th 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 5.0 of 10

    Modular quantization of a single holographic CFT reproduces exact Hartle-Hawking correlators of smooth BTZ black holes in the semiclassical limit while yielding non-smooth stretched-horizon descriptions at finite GN.

  3. Finite N Black Holes through the Brick Wall

    hep-th 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 5.0 of 10

    Reinterprets the brick-wall model as an effective description of finite-N departures from the semiclassical near-horizon continuum in AdS/CFT, producing residual reflections and model-dependent echoes.

  4. JT gravity and deformed CFTs

    hep-th 2025-07 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Deformed CFTs on a strip with a stretched-horizon conformal boundary are proposed as UV completions of pure and matter-coupled JT gravity, reproducing its entropy and a Page-curve-like saturation.

Pith tools