Black Hole Entropy and String Instantons

Francois Englert, Laurent Houart, Paul Windey

Published 1995-07-10, updated 1995-10-19Version 2

The coupling of a string to gravity allows for Schwarzschild black holes whose entropy to area relation is $S=(A/4)(1-4\mu)$, where $\mu$ is the string tension. This departure from the A/4 universality results from a string instanton generating a black hole with smaller entropy at a temperature exceeding the Hawking value. The temperature is sensitive to the presence of classical matter outside the black hole horizon but the entropy is not. The horizon materializes at the quantum level. It is conjectured that such a macroscopic non local effect may be operative in retrieving information from incipient black holes.