Microcanonical Action and the Entropy of a Rotating Black Hole

Abstract

The authors have recently proposed a ``microcanonical functional integral" representation of the density of quantum states of the gravitational field. The phase of this real--time functional integral is determined by a ``microcanonical" or Jacobi action, the extrema of which are classical solutions at fixed total energy, not at fixed total time interval as in Hamilton's action. This approach is fully general but is especially well suited to gravitating systems because for them the total energy can be fixed simply as a boundary condition on the gravitational field. In this paper we describe how to obtain Jacobi's action for general relativity. We evaluate it for a certain complex metric associated with a rotating black hole and discuss the relation of the result to the density of states and to the entropy of the black hole. (Dedicated to Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat in honor of her retirement.)