Counting Schwarzschild and Charged Black Holes

Abstract

We review the arguments that fundamental string states are in one to one correspondence with black hole states. We demonstrate the power of the assumption by showing that it implies that the statistical entropy of a wide class of nonextreme black holes occurring in string theory is proportional to the horizon area. However, the numerical coefficient relating the area and entropy only agrees with the Bekenstein--Hawking formula if the central charge of the string is six which does not correspond to any known string theory. Unlike the current D-brane methods the method used in this paper is applicable for the case of Schwarzschild and highly non-extreme charged black holes.