IAS Quantum Aspects of Black Holes Group Meeting

Abstract: Recently, it has been argued that in certain settings, the entropy of a region in semiclassical quantum gravity can be computed in a UV-finite way using tools from the theory of operator algebras. I will attempt to formulate the most general setting in which these techniques can be applied. In particular, I will argue that in any gauge-invariant region in semiclassical gravity, there is a canonical UV-finite formula for the entropy differences of perturbatively similar states, and that this UV-finite formula matches the generalized entropy of Bekenstein and Hawking. Based on work with Jensen and Speranza.