SciPost Submission Page
On the Origin of Species Thermodynamics and the Black Hole - Tower Correspondence
by Alvaro Herráez, Dieter Lüst, Joaquin Masias, Marco Scalisi
This Submission thread is now published as
Submission summary
| Authors (as registered SciPost users): | Alvaro Herraez · Joaquin Masias |
| Submission information | |
|---|---|
| Preprint Link: | scipost_202411_00052v2 (pdf) |
| Date accepted: | 2025-02-11 |
| Date submitted: | 2025-02-04 11:42 |
| Submitted by: | Herraez, Alvaro |
| Submitted to: | SciPost Physics |
| Ontological classification | |
|---|---|
| Academic field: | Physics |
| Specialties: |
|
| Approach: | Theoretical |
Abstract
Species thermodynamics has been proposed in analogy to black hole thermodynamics. The entropy scales like an area and is given by the mere counting of the number of the species. In this work, we {\it derive} the constitutive relations of species thermodynamics and explain how those {\it originate} from standard thermodynamics. We consider configurations of species in thermal equilibrium inside a box of size $L$, and show that the temperature $T$ of the system, which plays a crucial role, is always upper bounded above by the species scale $\Lambda_{\rm sp}$. We highlight three relevant regimes: (i) when $L^{-1}< T<\Lambda_{\rm sp}$, and gravitational collapse is avoided, the system exhibits standard thermodynamics features, for example, with the entropy scaling like the volume of the box; (ii) in the limit $L^{-1}\simeq T\rightarrow \Lambda_{\rm sp}$ we recover the rules of species thermodynamics with the entropy scaling like the area of the box; (iii) an intermediate regime with $ L^{-1}\simeq T< \Lambda_{\rm sp}$ that avoids gravitational collapse and fulfills the Covariant Entropy Bound; this interpolates between the previous two regimes and its entropy is given simply in terms of the counting of the species contributing to the thermodynamic ensemble. This study also allows us to find a novel and independent bottom-up rationale for the Emergent String Conjecture. Finally, we present the {\it Black Hole - Tower Correspondence} as a generalization of the celebrated Black Hole - String Correspondence. This provides us with a robust framework to interpret the results of our thermodynamic investigation. Moreover, it allows us to qualitatively account for the entropy of black holes in terms of the degrees of freedom of the weakly coupled species in the tower.
Author indications on fulfilling journal expectations
- Provide a novel and synergetic link between different research areas.
- Open a new pathway in an existing or a new research direction, with clear potential for multi-pronged follow-up work
- Detail a groundbreaking theoretical/experimental/computational discovery
- Present a breakthrough on a previously-identified and long-standing research stumbling block
Author comments upon resubmission
List of changes
- The sentence at the end of page 1 — after eq. (1.1)— was reformulated slightly to make the point more clear.
- The sentence at the end of page 2 — after eq. (1.3)— was modified to include a brief definition of species thermodynamics, together with a reference to section 3.4, where they are dicussed in more detail.
- A typo noticed by the referee was fixed in eq. (2.10), the same typo was also fixed in eq. (1.3).
- The explicit definition of $P_q$ was added below eq. (3.6) for clarity.
- On page 22, after eq. (3.41), the second condition for appropriate towers was reformulated to make it more clear.
-$\Delta$ was explicitly introduced as the "distance in moduli space" above (3.87), when it first appears.
- The acronym "SDC" was replaced by "Distance Conjecture" in the text.
- Typo corrected in the first paragraph of Section 6: "can be derived deriving" -> "can be derived".
- We re-wrote different parts of the fourth paragraph in the Conclussions to explain more clearly what the subtleties are when identifying the species scale with the string scale, as well as to explain how the canonical ensemble analysis that we present offers a new perspective on it.
Published as SciPost Phys. 18, 083 (2025)