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Landauer's principle and black-hole entropy

  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Landauer's principle that the world's entropy increases by at least k B h 2 upon a one-bit erasure in a memory coupled to an infinite heat bath is generalized to the nominally different case of dumping information past a black hole's event horizon. Specifically this idea is used to provide a lower bound on the black-hole entropy to horizon area ratio using onl y a modicum of classical general relativity and relativastic quantum mechanics; quantum field theoretic methods are not required. The dumping of free 1-D scalar-particle wave packets leads to an estimate of .181 for the lower bound of the said ratio. This compares well to the established value of exactly 114 for the ratio itself and contrasts with Bekenstein's original %formation theoretic" estimate of .028.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the Workshop on Physics and Computation, PhysComp 1992
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages86-92
Number of pages7
ISBN (Electronic)0818634200, 9780818634208
DOIs
StatePublished - 1992
Event1992 Workshop on Physics and Computation, PhysComp 1992 - Dallas, United States
Duration: Oct 2 1992Oct 4 1992

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Workshop on Physics and Computation, PhysComp 1992

Conference

Conference1992 Workshop on Physics and Computation, PhysComp 1992
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityDallas
Period10/2/9210/4/92

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

  • Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
  • Instrumentation

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