Black hole thermodynamics is around the corner

Abstract

We propose to work on the Euclidean black hole solution with a corner rather than with the prevalent conical singularity. As a result, we find that the Wald formula for black hole entropy can be readily obtained for generic $F(R_{abcd})$ gravity by using both the action without the corner term and the action with the corner term due to their equivalence to the first order variation. With such an equivalence, we further make use of a special diffeomorphism to accomplish a direct derivation of the ADM Hamiltonian conjugate to the Killing vector field normal to the horizon in the Lorentz signature as a conjugate variable of the inverse temperature in the grand canonical ensemble.