Jacob Bekenstein

Jacob Bekenstein, an Israeli physicist of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, planted the seeds of a revolution of our understanding of space-time. Using conservative intuitive methods including time-old gedanken experiments, he discovered that black holes have thermodynamical properties such as entropy.

Moreover, he found that their entropy was not extensive, unlike that of any other thermodynamical system considered before, but rather is proportional to the surface of their horizon. Furthermore, Bekenstein pioneered the study of black holes by focusing on their information content aspects. This led him to obtain bounds of a holographic nature on the amount of information that can be stored in a given region of space-time.

This book contains a series of scientific and personal contributions by his contemporaries who recall the struggle against his ideas and then with them: the fate accompanying many revolutionary ideas. This is followed by original scientific contributions by many of the leaders of current research on black hole physics and holography. They have trodden his path and expanded it. The impact of Jacob Bekenstein's visionary ideas is just starting to be understood.

Contents:

• Preface (The Editors)
• Jacob Bekenstein (1947–2015): A Conservative Revolutionary (E Rabinovici)
• In Loving Memory of Jacob Bekenstein (The Bekenstein Family)
• Photos of Jacob Bekenstein
• The Early History as Seen from Some Who were Involved:
  • Jacob Bekenstein and the Development of Black Hole Thermodynamics (R M Wald)
  • On the Microscopic Interpretation of the Bekenstein–Hawking Entropy (J M Bardeen)
  • Remembering Jacob (G W Gibbons)
• The Black Hole Entropy:
  • Remarks on Black Hole Entropy (V P Frolov)
  • Bekenstein, I, and the Quantum of Black Hole Surface Area (S Hod)
  • Black Hole Microstates (G 't Hooft)
  • Entropy from Carnot to Bekenstein (T Jacobson)
  • Developments in Black Hole Entropy (J Maldacena)
  • Quantum Black Holes (V Mukhanov)
  • Black Hole Information Revisited (A Strominger)
• The Bekenstein Bound:
  • Cosmological Implications of the Bekenstein Bound (T Banks and W Fischler)
  • Black Hole Entropy and the Bekenstein Bound (R Bousso)
  • The Bekenstein Bound (D N Page)
  • Bekenstein's Entropy Bound and Variations Thereof (G Veneziano)
  • Entropy, Gravity and Galactic Dynamics (E P Verlinde)
• Other Contributions in Memory of Jacob Bekenstein:
  • Jacob Bekenstein's Universes: From Black Holes to Modified Theories of Gravity (O Lahav)
  • Turbulence and Random Geometry (Y Oz)
  • MOND from a Brane-World Picture (M Milgrom)
  • Who Ordered That? On the Origin of LIGO's Merging Binary Black Holes (T Piran and K Hotekezaka)
  • Confinement/Deconfinement and Gravity-Assisted Emergent Higgs Mechanism in Quintessential Cosmological Model (E Guendelman, E Nissimov and S Pacheva)
  • Sakharov's Induced Gravity and the Poincaré Gauge Theory (M Chaichian, M Oksanen and A Tureanu)
• Selected Works of Jacob Bekenstein:
  • Black Holes and the Second Law
  • Black Holes and Entropy
  • Generalized Second Law of Thermodynamics in Black Hole Physics
  • The Quantum Mass Spectrum of the Kerr Black Hole
  • A Universal Upper Bound on the Entropy to Energy Ratio for Bounded Systems
  • Fine Structure Constant: Is it Really a Constant?
  • Entropy Bounds and Black Hole Remnants

Readership: Researchers and academics in theoretical cosmology and astrophysics.Jacob Bekenstein;Black Hole;Gravity;Entropy00