The thermodynamic limit and black hole entropy in the area ensemble

Abstract

We discuss the thermodynamic limit in the canonical area ensemble used in loop quantum gravity to model quantum black holes. The computation of the thermodynamic limit is the rigorous way to obtain a smooth entropy from the counting entropy given by a direct determination of the number of microstates compatible with macroscopic quantities (the energy in standard statistical mechanics or the area in the framework presented here). As we will show in specific examples the leading behavior of the smoothed entropy for large horizon areas is the same as the counting entropy but the subleading contributions differ. This is important because these corrections determine the concavity or convexity of the entropy as a function of the area.