Polymeric quantization and black hole thermodynamics

Polymer quantization is a non-standard representation of the quantum mechanics that was inspiredby loop quantum gravity. To study the associated statistical mechanics, one needs to find microstates' energies which are eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian operator in the polymer framework. But, this is not an easy task at all since the Hamiltonian takes a nonlinear form in polymer picture. In this paper, we introduce a semiclassical method in which it is not necessary to solve the eigenvalue problem. Instead, we work with the classical Hamiltonian function and the deformed density of states in the polymeric phase space. Implementing this method, we obtain the canonical partition function for the polymerized systems and show that our results are in a good agreement with those arising from full quantum considerations. Using the partition function, we study the thermodynamics of quantum Schwarzschild black hole and obtain corrections to the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy due to loop quantum gravity effects. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.