Einstein gravity as the thermodynamic limit of an underlying quantum statistics

Abstract

The black hole area theorem suggests that classical general relativity is the thermodynamic limit of a quantum statistics. The degrees of freedom of the statistical theory cannot be the spacetime metric. We argue that the statistical theory should be constructed from a noncommutative gravity, whose classical, and thermodynamic, approximation is Einstein gravity. The noncommutative gravity theory exhibits a duality between quantum fields and macroscopic black holes, which is used to show that the black hole possesses an entropy of the order of its area. The principle on which this work is based also provides a possible explanation for the smallness of the cosmological constant, and for the quantum measurement problem, indicating that this is a promising avenue towards the merger of quantum mechanics and gravity.