It is known since the work of Bardeen, Bekenstein, Carter and Hawking [42, 32, 162] that black holes are
thermodynamical systems equipped with a temperature and an entropy. In analogy to Bolzmann’s
statistical theory of gases, one expects that the entropy of black holes counts microscopic degrees of
freedom. Understanding what these degrees of freedom actually are is one of the main challenges that a
theory of quantum gravity should address.
Since the advent of string theory, many black holes enjoying supersymmetry have been understood
microscopically. In many cases, supersymmetry and its non-renormalization theorems allow one to map the
black-hole states to dual states in a weakly-coupled description, which also provides a method to
microscopically reproduce Hawking radiation; see [253, 60] and subsequent work. For all supersymmetric
black holes that contain in their near-horizon limit a factor of three-dimensional anti-de Sitter spacetime
AdS3 or a quotient thereof, a simpler microscopic model is available. Since quantum gravity
in asymptotically AdS3 geometries is described by a two-dimensional conformal field theory
( CFT) [58
, 251
], one can account for the entropy and the Hawking radiation of these
supersymmetric or nearly supersymmetric black holes using only the universal properties of a dual
CFT description defined in the near-horizon region [209
, 104
] (for reviews, see [155, 113]).
Ultraviolet completions of these AdS/CFT correspondences can be constructed using string
theory [205
, 265
].
These results can be contrasted with the challenge of describing astrophysical black holes that are non-supersymmetric and non-extremal, for which these methods cannot be directly applied. Astrophysical black holes are generically rotating and have approximately zero electromagnetic charge. Therefore, the main physical focus should be to understand the microstates of the Kerr black hole and to a smaller extent the microstates of the Schwarzschild, the Kerr–Newman and the Reissner–Nordström black hole.
Recently, considerable progress has been made in reproducing the entropy of the
Kerr black hole as well as reproducing part of its gravitational dynamics using dual
field theories that share many properties with two-dimensional CFTs [156, 53
, 68
] (see
also [104
]).1
The Kerr/CFT correspondence will be the main focus of this review. Its context is not limited to the sole
Kerr black hole. Indeed, it turns out that the ideas underlying the correspondence apply as well to a large
class of black holes in supergravity (in four and higher dimensions) independently of the asymptotic
region (asymptotically-flat, anti-de Sitter…) far from the black hole. These extensions of the
Kerr/CFT correspondence only essentially require the presence of a
axial symmetry
associated with angular momentum. It is important to state that at present the Kerr/CFT
correspondence and its extensions are most understood for extremal and near-extremal black
holes. Only sparse but non-trivial clues point to a CFT description of black holes away from
extremality [104, 68
, 107
].
Before jumping into the theory of black holes, it is important to note at the outset that rotating
extremal black holes might be of astrophysical relevance. Assuming exactly zero electromagnetic charge, the
bound on the Kerr angular momentum derived from the cosmic-censorship hypothesis is . No
physical process exists that would turn a non-extremal black hole into an extremal one. Using details of the
accretion disk around the Kerr black hole, Thorne derived the bound
assuming
that only reasonable matter can fall into the black hole [258]. Quite surprisingly, it has been
claimed that several known astrophysical black holes, such as the black holes in the X-ray binary
GRS 1905+105 [218] and Cygnus X-1 [152], are more than 95% close to the extremality bound. Also, the
spin-to-mass–square ratio of the supermassive black holes in the active galactic nuclei MCG-6-30-15 [57]
and 1H 0707-495 [134] has been claimed to be around 98%. However, these measurements are subject to
controversy since independent data analyses based on different assumptions led to opposite results as
reviewed in [138]: the spin-to-mass–square ratio of the very same black hole in the X-ray binary
GRS 1905+105 has been evaluated as
[182], while the spin of the black hole
in Cygnus X-1 has been evaluated as
[219]. If the measurements of high
angular momenta are confirmed or if precise measurements of other nearby highly-spinning black
holes can be performed, it would promote extremal black holes as “nearly physical” objects of
nature.
In this review, we will present a derivation of the arguments underlying the Kerr/CFT correspondence
and its extensions starting from first-principles. For that purpose, it will be sufficient to follow an
effective field theory approach based solely on gravity and quantum field theory. In particular,
we will not need any detail of the ultraviolet completions of quantum gravity except for one
assumption (see Section 1.1 for a description of the precise classes of gravitational theories
under study). We will assume that the electromagnetic field can be promoted to be a
Kaluza–Klein vector of a higher-dimensional spacetime (see Section 1.2 for some elementary
justifications and elaborations on this assumption). If this assumption is correct, it turns out that the
Kerr/CFT correspondence can be further generalized using the
electric charge as a key
quantity instead of the
angular momentum [159
]. We will use this assumption as a guiding
principle to draw parallels between the physics of static charged black holes and rotating black
holes. Our point of view is that a proper understanding of the concepts behind the Kerr/CFT
correspondence is facilitated by studying in parallel static-charged black holes and rotating black
holes.
Since extremal black holes are the key objects of study, we will spend a large amount of time describing their properties in Section 2. We will contrast the properties of static extremal black holes and of rotating extremal black holes. We will discuss how one can decouple the near-horizon region from the exterior region. We will then show that one can associate thermodynamical properties with any extremal black hole and we will argue that near-horizon geometries contain no local bulk dynamics. Since we aim at drawing parallels between black holes and two-dimensional CFTs, we will quickly review some of their most relevant properties for our concerns in Section 3.
After this introductory material, we will discuss the core of the Kerr/CFT correspondence starting from
the microscopic counting of the entropy of extremal black holes in Section 4. There, we will show how the
near-horizon region admits a set of symmetries at its boundary, which form a Virasoro algebra. Several
choices of boundary conditions exist, where the algebra extends a different compact symmetry of the
black hole. Following semi-classical quantization rules, the operators, which define quantum gravity in the
near-horizon region, form a representation of the Virasoro algebra. We will then argue that
near-horizon quantum states can be identified with those of a chiral half of a two-dimensional CFT.
This thesis will turn out to be consistent with the description of non-extremal black holes. The
thermodynamical potential associated with the
symmetry will then be interpreted as the
temperature of the density matrix dual to the black hole. The entropy of the black hole will finally be
reproduced from the asymptotic growth of states in each chiral half of these CFTs via Cardy’s
formula.
In Section 5 we will move to the description of non-extremal black holes, and we will concentrate our
analysis on asymptotically-flat black holes for simplicity. We will describe how part of the dynamics of
probe fields in the near-extremal Kerr–Newman black hole can be reproduced by correlators in a family of
dual CFTs with both a left and a right-moving sector. The left-moving sector of the CFTs will match with
the corresponding chiral limit of the CFTs derived at extremality. In Section 6 we will review the hidden
local conformal symmetry that is present in some probes around the generic Kerr–Newman black hole. We
will also infer from the breaking of this conformal symmetry that the Kerr–Newman black hole entropy can
be mapped to states of these CFTs at specific left and right-moving temperatures. Finally, we will
summarize the key results of the Kerr/CFT correspondence in Section 7 and provide a list of open
problems. This review complements the lectures on the Kerr black hole presented in [54] by providing an
overview of the Kerr/CFT correspondence and its extensions for general rotating or charged
black holes in gravity coupled to matter fields in a larger context. Since we follow an effective
field-theory approach, we will cover string-theory models of black holes only marginally. We refer
the interested reader to the complementary string theory-oriented review of extremal black
holes [244].2
http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2012-11 |
Living Rev. Relativity 15, (2012), 11
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