UNC-CH Physics and Astronomy CoSMS Colloquium

Clifford Johnson, University of Southern California

“Holographic Heat Engines for Fun and Profit”

New work has shown how to complete the correspondence between the physics of black holes and the laws of thermodynamics by incorporating volume and pressure into the formalism. This results in a change in the thermodynamic interpretation of the black hole’s mass, and may give a new handle on understanding aspects of theories of gravity with non-vanishing cosmological constant. The concept of the “holographic heat engine”, where a black hole acts as the working substance for a heat engine, arises naturally in this framework, and further connects ideas from traditional thermodynamics, quantum gravity, and field theory. This talk will try to motivate and explain some of these developments, and show some potential applications.