Black Hole Statistical Mechanics and The Angular Velocity Ensemble

Abstract

An new ensemble - the angular velocity ensemble - is derived using Jaynes' method of maximising entropy subject to prior information constraints. The relevance of the ensemble to black holes is motivated by a discussion of external parameters in statistical mechanics and their absence from the Hamiltonian of general relativity. It is shown how this leads to difficulty in deriving entropy as a function of state and recovering the first law of thermodynamics from the microcanonical and canonical ensembles applied to black holes.