Why the entropy of spacetime is independent of species of particles: the species problem

Abstract

The Hawking radiation emits all species of particles, but the Bekenstein–Hawking entropy is independent of the number of the species of particles. This is the so-called species problem—a puzzling problem for a long time. In this paper, we suggest a solution to this problem. A result of the scheme is that the black hole atmosphere has a mass equaling 3/8 mass of a classical Schwarzschild black hole, which agrees with ’t Hooft’s brick wall model.