ORGANIZERS:
Barak Kol, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Ofer Biham, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Re'em Sari, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
This conference marks forty years since the publication of Prof. Jacob Bekenstein's seminal paper on the entropy of black holes, and celebrated his winning the Wolf Prize in physics, 2012. This marvelous coincidence of events created a unique opportunity to discuss and analyze the achievements of the past forty years in the field of black hole thermodynamics, as well as the challenges we face today and the prospects for future research directions.
The concept of a Balck Hole is one of the scientific terms which are best known in popular culture. A central prediction of Einstein's theory of gravity, it describes a strongly gravitating, maximally collapsed object defined by its boundary, a surface of no return known as the horizon. In the early 1070s it was realized that quantum mechanics imples that a black hole is not completely black, but rather it is a thermal system characterized by temperature and entropy, and displaying thermal radiation. Two major ingredients in this development were the discovery of black hole entropy by Bekenstein and the subsequent discovery of black hole temperature by Stephen Hawking. These discoveries remain to this day among the most important clues about how gravitation and quantum physics might be compatible in nature, a question considered to be one of the central mysteries of theoretical physics today.
SPEAKERS:
Jacob Bekenstein (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Micha Berkooz (Weizmann Institute)
Luc Blanchet (Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris)
Raphael Bousso (UC Berkeley)
Ram Brustein (Ben-Gurion University)
Steven Carlip (UC Davis)
Georgi Dvali (LMU Munich and CERN)
Roberto Emparan (University of Barcelona)
Gerard ‘t Hooft (Utrecht University)
Nissan Itzhaki (Tel Aviv University)
Ted Jacobson (University of Maryland)
Barak Kol (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Juan Maldacena (IAS Princeton)
Viatcheslav Mukhanov (LMU Munich)
Robert Myers (Perimeter Institute)
Yaron Oz (Tel Aviv University)
Eliezer Rabinovici (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Scott Tremaine (IAS Princeton)
William Unruh (University of British Columbia)
Robert Wald (University of Chicago)
Amos Yarom (Technion)