Particle absorption by black holes and the generalized second law of thermodynamics

Details Particle absorption by black holes and the generalized second law of thermodynamics Particle absorption by black holes and the generalized second law of thermodynamics

2008-07-11

arxiv.org/abs/0807.1938v10

Proc.Roy.Soc.Lond.A466:1155-1166,2010

Physics

General Physics

11 pages, content matches published version

Scientific paper

10.1098/rspa.2009.0331

The change in entropy, /DeltaS, associated with the quasi-static absorption of a particle of energy u by a Schwarzschild black hole (ScBH) is approximately (u/T)-s, where T is the Hawking temperature of the black hole and s is the entropy of the particle. Motivated by the statistical interpretation of entropy, it is proposed here that absorption should be suppressed, but not forbidden, when /DeltaS<0, which requires the absorption cross-section to be sensitive to /DeltaS. A purely thermodynamic formulation of the probability for absorption is obtained from the standard relationship between microstates and entropy. If /DeltaS>>1 and s<