Microscopic origin of black hole entropy from tachyon condensation

Abstract: We show generically that the dynamics of a probe particle near the event horizon of a non-extreme black hole is described by the tachyon effective action. The Hagedorn temperature in the action is always equal to the Hawking temperature of the background black hole. The fact suggests that the infalling particle should decay completely into gravitons or closed strings approaching the event horizon. The increased area in the black hole due to absorption of a particle should be interpreted as the entropy of degenerate states of the closed strings that the particle decays into. With the energy match condition between the infalling particle and the emitted closed strings on the event horizon, we examine this variational area-entropy relation and find that it matches in all cases if the closed string emission process from an unstable D0-brane obeys the first law.