Chapter 6: Near-Horizon Conformal Structure, Entropy and Decay Rate of Black Holes

It is shown that a mass scalar field probe can be used to reveal the near-horizon conformal structure of a large class of black holes. The logarithmic correction to black hole entropy follows from the algebraic properties of the near-horizon Klein–Gordon operator. The black hole decay can be analyzed within this formalism as a geodesic motion in an appropriate moduli space.