Killing horizons kill horizon degrees

Abstract

Frequently it is argued that the microstates responsible for the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy should arise from some physical degrees of freedom located near or on the black hole horizon. In this Essay we elucidate that instead entropy may emerge from the conversion of physical degrees of freedom, attached to a generic boundary, into unobservable gauge degrees of freedom attached to the horizon. By constructing the reduced phase space it can be demonstrated that such a transmutation indeed takes place for a large class of black holes, including Schwarzschild.