THOUGHTS ON THE AREA THEOREM

Abstract

Hawking's area theorem can be understood from a quasistationary process in which a black hole accretes positive energy matter, independent of the details of the gravity action. I use this process to study the dynamics of the inner as well as the outer horizons for various black holes which include the recently discovered exotic black holes and three-dimensional black holes in higher derivative gravities as well as the usual Banados–Teitelboim–Zanelli (BTZ) black hole and the Kerr black hole in four dimensions. I find that the area for the inner horizon "can decrease," rather than increase, with the quasistationary process. However, I find that the area for the outer horizon "never decrease" such as the usual area theorem still works in our examples, though this is quite nontrivial in general. I also find that the recently proposed new entropy formulae for the above mentioned, recently discovered black holes satisfy the second law of thermodynamics.