Black Hole Entropy: From Shannon to Bekenstein

Abstract

In this note we have applied directly the Shannon formula for information theory entropy to derive the Black Hole (Bekenstein-Hawking) entropy. Our analysis is semi-classical in nature since we use the (recently proposed [8]) quantum mechanical near horizon mode functions to compute the tunneling probability that goes in to the Shannon formula, following the general idea of [5]. Our framework conforms to the information theoretic origin of Black Hole entropy, as originally proposed by Bekenstein.

9 pages Latex, Comments are welcome; Thoroughly revised version, reference and acknowledgements sections enlarged, numerical error in final result corrected, no major changes, to appear in IJTP