Hawking Radiation and Entropy from Horizon Degrees of Freedom

Abstract

We study the thermodynamic properties of horizons using the dynamical description of the gravitational degrees of freedom at a horizon found in a previous work. We use the action of the horizon degrees of freedom to posit an ansatz Liouville action in the near-horizon region, and calculate the horizon entropy using the Cardy formula. We also couple the gravitational degrees of freedom at the horizon to a classical scalar background, and show that Hawking radiation is produced.