Gravitational surface Hamiltonian and entropy quantization

The surface Hamiltonian corresponding to the surface part of a gravitational action has xp structure where p is conjugate momentum of x. Moreover, it leads to TS on the horizon of a black hole. Here T and S are temperature and entropy of the horizon. Imposing the hermiticity condition we quantize this Hamiltonian. This leads to an equidistant spectrum of its eigenvalues. Using this we show that the entropy of the horizon is quantized. This analysis holds for any order of Lanczos-Lovelock gravity. For general relativity, the area spectrum is consistent with Bekenstein's observation. This provides a more robust confirmation of this earlier result as the calculation is based on the direct quantization of the Hamiltonian in the sense of usual quantum mechanics. (C) 2016 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license.