STATISTICAL ENTROPY OF NEAR-EXTREMAL AND FUNDAMENTAL BLACK P-BRANES

The problem of asymptotic density of quantum states of fundamental ext ended objects is revised in detail. We argue that in the near-extremal regime the fundamental p-brane approach can yield a microscopic inter pretation of the black hole entropy. The asymptotic behavior of partit ion functions, associated with the p-branes, and the near-extremal ent ropy of five-dimensional black holes are explicitly calculated.