Paper detail

Black hole entropy divergence and the uncertainty principle

Black hole entropy has been shown by 't Hooft to diverge at the horizon. The region near the horizon is in a thermal state, so entropy is linear to energy which consequently also diverges. We find a similar divergence for the energy of the reduced density matrix of relativistic and non-relativistic field theories, extending previous results in quantum mechanics. This divergence is due to an infinitely sharp division between the observable and unobservable regions of space, and it stems from the position/momentum uncertainty relation in the same way that the momentum fluctuations of a precisely localized quantum particle diverge. We show that when the boundary between the observable and unobservable regions is smoothed the divergence is tamed. We argue that the divergence of black hole entropy can also be interpreted as a consequence of position/momentum uncertainty, and that 't Hooft's brick wall tames the divergence in the same way, by smoothing the boundary.