STATISTICAL ENTROPY OF SCHWARZSCHILD BLACK-HOLES

The entropy of a seven dimensional Schwarzschild black hole of arbitra ry large radius is obtained by a mapping onto a near extremal self-dua l three-brane whose partition function can be evaluated. The three-bra ne arises from duality after submitting a neutral blackbrane, from whi ch the Schwarzschild black hole can be obtained by compactification, t o an infinite boost in non compact eleven dimensional space-time and t hen to a Kaluza-Klein compactification. This limit can be defined in p recise terms and yields the Bekenstein-Hawking value up to a factor of order one which can be set to be exactly one with the extra assumptio n of keeping only transverse brane excitations. The method can be gene ralized to five and four dimensional black holes. (C) 1998 Elsevier Sc ience B.V. All rights reserved.