Holographic Bound from Second Law

Abstract

The holographic bound that the entropy (log of number of quantum states) of a system is bounded from above by a quarter of the area of a circumscribing surface measured in Planck areas is widely regarded a desideratum of any fundamental theory, but some exceptions occur. By suitable black hole gedanken experiments I show that the bound follows from the generalized second law for two broad classes of isolated systems: generic weakly gravitating systems composed of many elementary particles, and quiescent, nonrotating strongly gravitating configurations well above Planck mass. These justify an early claim by Susskind.