Quantization of black holes in the Wheeler-DeWitt approach

We discuss black hole quantization in the Wheeler-DeWitt approach. Our consideration is based on a detailed investigation of the canonical formulation of gravity with special considerations of surface terms. Since the phase space of gravity for noncompact spacetimes or spacetimes with boundaries is ill-defined unless one takes boundary degrees of freedom into account, we give a Hamiltonian formulation of the Einstein-Hilbert action as well as a Hamiltonian formulation of the surface terms. It then is shown how application to black hole spacetimes connects the boundary degrees of freedom with thermodynamical properties of black hole physics. Our treatment of the surface terms thereby naturally leads to the Nernst theorem. Moreover, it will produce insights into correlations between the Lorentzian and the Euclidean theory. Next we discuss quantization, which we perform in a standard manner. It is shown how the thermodynamical properties can be rediscovered from the quantum equations by a WKB-like approximation scheme. Back reaction is treated by going beyond the first order approximation. We end our discussion by a rigorous investigation of the so-called BTZ solution in (2 + 1)-dimensional gravity.