Quantum structure of spacetime and blackhole entropy

Abstract

The gap between a microscopic theory for quantum spacetime and the semiclassical physics of blackholes is bridged by treating the blackhole spacetimes as highly excited states of a class of nonlocal field theories. All the blackhole thermodynamics is shown to arise from asymptotic form of the dispersion relation satisfied by the elementary excitations of these field theories. These models involve, quite generically, fields which are: (i) smeared over regions of the order of Planck length and (ii) possess correlation functions which have universal short distance behaviour.