On the Origin of Gravitational Thermodynamics 
			 Vishnu JEJJALA
				IHES
			
			Lundi 10/03/2008, 14:45
			
			NOTE SPECIAL TIME AND LOCATION:   IHES, Marilyn and James Simons hall.
We show that very heavy pure states in gravity can appear to be mixed
states to almost all probes. For half-BPS states, typical states are
  described by a spacetime ``foam,'' the precise details of which are
  invisible to almost all probes. We indicate how coarse-graining over
  Planck scale fluctuations yields semiclassical geometries and propose
  this as a mechanism for the origin of gravitational thermodynamics. By
  working in perturbation theory with a small non-extremality parameter,
  lessons from the supersymmetric situation can be adapted to the
  microscopics of an almost extremal superstar. We match the counting of
  the black hole entropy in semiclassical gravity to the degeneracy of
  states in the dual field theory. Moreover, in certain decoupling
  limits, the entropy is explained in terms of strings stretching
  between D-branes.