Black Hole Entropy as Causal Links

We model a black hole spacetime as a causal set and count, with a certain definition, the number of causal links crossing the horizon in proximity to a spacelike or null hypersurface $\Sigma$. We find that this number is proportional to the horizon's area on $\Sigma$, thus supporting the interpretation of the links as the ``horizon atoms'' that account for its entropy. The cases studied include not only equilibrium black holes but ones far from equilibrium.Comment: Latex, 20 pages, 4 postscript figures, to appear in a special issue of {\it Foundations of Physics} in honor of Jacob Bekenstein, ``Thirty years of black hole physics'', edited by L. Horwit

The Running Gravitational Couplings

We compute the running of the cosmological constant and Newton's constant taking into account the effect of quantum fields with any spin between 0 and 2. We find that Newton's constant does not vary appreciably but the cosmological constant can change by many orders of magnitude when one goes from cosmological scales to typical elementary particle scales. In the extreme infrared, zero modes drive the cosmological constant to zero.Comment: 19 pages, TeX file, revised and expanded, some misprints correcte

Topology Change From Quantum Instability of Gauge Theory on Fuzzy CP^2

Many gauge theory models on fuzzy complex projective spaces will contain a strong instability in the quantum field theory leading to topology change. This can be thought of as due to the interaction between spacetime via its noncommutativity and the fields (matrices) and it is related to the perturbative UV-IR mixing. We work out in detail the example of fuzzy CP^2 and discuss at the level of the phase diagram the quantum transitions between the 3 spaces (spacetimes) CP^2, S^2 and the 0-dimensional space consisting of a single point {0}.Comment: 26 pages, one grap

Entanglement Entropy on Fuzzy Spaces

We study the entanglement entropy of a scalar filed in 2+1 spacetime where space is modeled by a fuzzy sphere and a fuzzy disc. In both models we evaluate numerically the resulting entropies and find that they are proportional to the number of boundary degrees of freedom. In the Moyal plan limit of the fuzzy disc the entanglement entropy per unit area (length) diverges if the ignored region is of infinite size. The divergence is (interpreted) of IR-UV mixing origin. In general we expect the entanglement entropy per unit area to be finite on a non-commutative space if the ignored region is of finite size.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures. This research is dedicated to Rafael Sorkin on the occasion of his 60th birthda

Comments on the Entanglement Entropy on Fuzzy Spaces

We locate the relevant degrees of freedom for the entanglement entropy on some 2+1 fuzzy models. It is found that the entropy is stored in the near boundary degrees of freedom. We give a simple analytical derivation for the area law using $1/N$ like expansion when only the near boundary degrees of freedom are incorporated. Numerical and qualitative evidences for the validity of near boundary approximation are finally given .Comment: 14 pages, 2 figure

On Horizon Molecules and Entropy in Causal Sets

We review the different proposals and attempts to identify the ``horizon molecules" that would give a kinematical estimation for the black hole entropy in causal set theory. The proposals are presented according to their chronological appearance in scientific literature. The review is neither very technical nor merely descriptive; it is aimed to provide the reader with a lucid introduction to the necessary concepts and mathematical background, and give him or her a broad view on the subject, by focusing on the main technical and conceptual issues that summarize the progress made in the last two decades.Comment: Invited chapter for the Causal Sets section of the Handbook of Quantum Gravity (Eds. C. Bambi, L. Modesto and I. L. Shapiro, Springer, expected in 2023). 44 pages, 11 Figure