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Caltech

High Energy Theory Seminar

Friday, May 30, 2025
11:00am to 12:00pm
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Online and In-Person Event
Quasinormal Corrections to Near-Extremal Black Hole Thermodynamics
Dan Kapec, Harvard University,

 Recent work on the quantum mechanics of near-extremal non-supersymmetric black holes has identified a characteristic  T^3/2  scaling of the low temperature black hole partition function. This result has only been derived using the path integral in the near-horizon region and relies on many assumptions. We discuss how to derive the  T^3/2 scaling for the near-extremal rotating BTZ black hole from a calculation in the full black hole background using the Denef-Hartnoll-Sachdev (DHS) formula, which expresses the 1-loop determinant of a thermal geometry in terms of a product over the quasinormal mode spectrum. We also derive the spectral measure for fields of any spin in Euclidean BTZ and use it to provide a new proof of the DHS formula and a new, direct derivation of the BTZ heat kernel. The computations suggest a path to proving the  T^3/2  scaling for the asymptotically flat 4d Kerr black hole.

The talk is in 469 Lauritsen.

Contact [email protected] for Zoom information.