# References

hep-th/9910213

Comments on “ Entropy of 2D Black Holes from Counting Microstates ” 

by

Mu-In Park<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1Electronic address: mipark@physics.sogang.ac.kr and Jae Hyung Yee

Department of Physics, Yonsei University, Seoul 120-749, Korea 

ABSTRACT

We point out that a recent analysis by Cadoni and Mignemi on the statistical entropy of 2D black holes has a serious error in identifying the Virasoro algebra which invalidates its principal claims.

PACS Nos: 04.70.Dy, 11.25.H, 11.30.-j, 04.20.Fy

9 September 1999

Recently Cadoni and Mignemi  presented a microscopical derivation of the entropy of the two-dimensional (2D) black holes. They have shown that the canonical algebra of the asymptotic symmetry of 2D Anti-de Sitter (ADS) space included the Virasoro algebra. Using this algebra and the Cardy’s formula they obtained the statistical entropy which agreed, up to a factor of $`\sqrt{2}`$, with the thermodynamical result. In this Comment, we point out that their analysis has a serious error which invalidates its principal claims.

Let us consider the problem in detail. The authors’ object was obtaining the microscopic derivation of the entropy of the 2D black holes in ADS space  from the microstate counting procedure of the three-dimensional ADS space $`a\mathrm{`}la`$ Brown-Henneaux  and Strominger  (BHS). In this approach, it is a basic ingredient that there is the infinite-dimensional conformal symmetry, for some (infinitely large or finite) boundaries, which is described by the Virasoro algebra with the “classical” central charge . It is the strategy to apply the Cardy’s formula for the asymptotic density of states to obtain the microscopic entropy though the true validity of the formula may be debatable .

As the simplest example of the 2D gravity theory that admits 2D black hole solution in ADS space they considered the Jackiw-Teitelboim model . Using the Regge-Teitelboim procedure , they obtained the differentiable, which means ‘no boundary terms in the field variation’, Hamiltonian

$$H[\chi ]=𝑑x(\chi ^{}+\chi ^{}_x)+J[\chi ]$$

for the surface deformation parameters $`\chi ^{}=N\chi ^t,\chi ^{}=\chi ^x+N^x\chi ^t`$ with the lapse, shift functions $`N,N^x`$ and the Killing vectors $`\chi ^t,\chi ^x`$ along the tangent vectors $`/t,/x`$ respectively. Here, note that the boundary charge $`J[\chi ]`$ is defined only at a boundary “point”, $`x\mathrm{}`$, and no other integration variables present. With this Hamiltonian, the central charge are read off usually from the Dirac bracket algebra 

$`\{J[\chi ],J[\omega ]\}_{DB}=J[[\chi ,\omega ]]+c(\chi ,\omega )`$ (1)   
or from the variation of $`J[\chi ]`$ under the surface deformations

$`\delta _\omega J[\chi ]=J[[\chi ,\omega ]]+c(\chi ,\omega )`$ (2)   
with the surface deformation Lie bracket $`[\chi ,\omega ]`$  and its corresponding central term $`c(\chi ,\omega )`$. \[The Dirac bracket for the dynamical variables $`A,B`$ is defined usually as $`\{A,B\}_{DB}=\{A,B\}\{A,\mathrm{\Gamma }_\alpha \}C_{\alpha \beta }^1\{\mathrm{\Gamma }_\beta ,B\}`$ with the second-class constraints $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\alpha (\text{det}C_{\alpha \beta }0,C_{\alpha \beta }\{\mathrm{\Gamma }_\alpha ,\mathrm{\Gamma }_\beta \})`$ and the inverse of $`C_{\alpha \beta }`$ , $`C_{\alpha \beta }^1`$ . In our case of (1), it is implicitly assumed that the gauge-fixing conditions $`F_\gamma 0`$ are introduced to make the (first-class) energy and momentum constraints $`0,_x0`$ become the second-class constraints set $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\{,_x,F_\gamma \}`$.\]

But there are serious mismatches  with our purpose: a) Because the algebra is defined only at one (boundary) point there is no room for the infinite tower of symmetry generators through the Fourier-series expansion of the algebra as required in the BHS procedure. b) $`J[\chi ]`$ is time-dependent in general which means that $`J[\chi ]`$ is not conserved quantity. This is contrast to the usual fact that $`J[\chi ]`$ is a (boundary part of) conserved Noether charge . Moreover, the algebra and the central term $`c(\chi ,\omega )`$ are now time-dependent and eventually “time-dependent entropy” would be expected $`S\sqrt{c(\chi ,\omega )}`$ according to the Cardy’s formula  in general. In order to resolve this unwanted situation they introduced the time-integrated charge $`\widehat{J}`$

$`\widehat{J}[\chi ]={\displaystyle \frac{\lambda }{2\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi /\lambda }}𝑑tJ[\chi ]`$ (3)   
with time period of $`2\pi /\lambda `$ and they obtained a Virasoro algebra in the asymptotic symmetry algebra of 2D black holes. But this procedure is an erroneous one. Let us explain our argument in detail.

We start our argument by considering Eq. (2) in their suggesting frame. It is true that the (overall) time integration of (2) has a definite meaning as

$`\widehat{\delta _\omega J[\chi ]}=\widehat{J}[[\chi ,\omega ]]+\widehat{c}(\chi ,\omega )`$ (4)   
with the central charge (23) of Ref.  and this looks like a Virasoro algebra. But the problem of this method is that the left-hand side of (4) can not be written as

$`\{\widehat{J}[\chi ],\widehat{J}[\omega ]\}_{DB},`$ (5)   
which is essential for the interpretation of the time integrated (1) as a Virasoro algebra: Let us consider

$`\{J[\chi ],H[\omega ]\}_{DB}=\{J[\chi ],J[\omega ]\}_{DB}=\delta _\omega J[\chi ]`$ (6)   
which implies that $`H[\omega ]`$ is the correct (asymptotic) symmetry generator, i.e.,

$`\{\varphi (x),H[\omega ]\}_{DB}=\delta _\omega \varphi (x).`$ (7)   
for the symmetry transformation $`\delta _\omega \varphi `$ of the field $`\varphi `$. \[This Dirac bracket as well as the Poisson bracket in Eq. (19) of Ref.  can be well-defined contrast to the claims of Cadoni and Mignemi following the work of Ref. .\] Here it is an important fact that the Dirac brackets are all defined at $`equaltimes`$ because the constituting Poisson brackets are equal times in nature for the $`local`$ field theory:

$$\{A,B\}=𝑑x\left(\frac{\delta A}{\delta \varphi _k(x,t)}\frac{\delta B}{\delta \pi ^k(x,t)}\frac{\delta A}{\delta \pi ^k(x,t)}\frac{\delta B}{\delta \varphi _k(x,t)}\right)$$

for the canonical conjugates pairs $`\varphi _k(x,t),\pi ^k(x,t)`$. If we perform the (overall) time integration over (3) the left-hand side becomes

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda }{2\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi /\lambda }}𝑑t\{J[\chi (t)],J[\omega (t)]\}_{DB}`$   
or

$`\left({\displaystyle \frac{\lambda }{2\pi }}\right)^2{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi /\lambda }}𝑑t^{}{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi /\lambda }}𝑑t{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi }{\lambda }}\delta (tt^{})\{J[\chi (t)],J[\omega (t)]\}_{DB}.`$   
It is then clear that (6) can not be written as (5) because of the factor $`\frac{2\pi }{\lambda }\delta (tt^{})`$ in the integrand. This is a direct consequence of (6) which is a well-known fact related to the Noether theorem in the field theory; if their claim which equating (4) and (5) was correct, the time-integrated quantity $`\widehat{H}[\chi ](\widehat{J}[\chi ])`$ should be treated as the symmetry generator necessarily contrast to (7).

In conclusion, they made a serious mistake by identifying (4) and (5) and hence their way of applying the Cardy’s formula to obtain the black hole entropy (25) of Ref.  with the misidentified $`c`$ (central charge) and $`l_0`$ (lowest eigenvalue of the Virasoro generator) can not be justified.

MIP would like to thank Prof. Steven Carlip, Drs. Gung-won Kang and Hyuk-jae Lee for several helpful discussions. MIP was supported in part by a postdoctoral grant from the Natural Science Research Institute, Yonsei University in the year 1999 and in part by the Korea Research Foundation under 98-015-D00061.