Hawking radiation and entropy from horizon degrees of freedom

Abstract

We study the thermodynamic properties of horizons using the dynamical description of the gravitational degrees of freedom at a horizon found in a previous work. We use the action of the horizon degrees of freedom to calculate the horizon entropy using the Cardy formula, and obtain the expected Bekenstein–Hawking entropy. We also couple the gravitational degrees of freedom at the horizon to a classical background scalar field, and show that Hawking radiation is produced.