On area and entropy of a black hole

We consider a model of a black hole consisting of a number of elementary components. Examples of such models occur in loop quantum gravity and in M-theory. We show that treating the elementary components as completely distinguishable leads to the area law for the black hole entropy. Contrary to previous results, we show that no Bose condensation occurs and that the horizon area has big local fluctuations. We discuss a regularization which leads to the equidistant area spectrum in loop quantum gravity. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier B.V.