Membrane Paradigm from Near Horizon Soft Hair

Abstract

The membrane paradigm posits that black hole microstates are dynamical degrees of freedom associated with a physical membrane vanishingly close to the black hole's event horizon. The soft hair paradigm postulates that black holes can be equipped with zero-energy charges associated with residual diffeomorphisms that label near horizon degrees of freedom. In this essay we argue that the latter paradigm implies the former. More specifically, we exploit suitable near horizon boundary conditions that lead to an algebra of `soft hair charges' containing infinite copies of the Heisenberg algebra, associated with area-preserving shear deformations of black hole horizons. We employ the near horizon soft hair and its Heisenberg algebra to provide a formulation of the membrane paradigm and show how it accounts for black hole entropy.