Weinberg Institute Seminar with Joaquin Turiaci

Abstract: In the first part of this talk I review recent progress clarifying some physical aspects of the extremal limit of black holes. I describe two puzzles that arise from a semiclassical treatment of near-extremal black hole thermodynamics. Both puzzles are resolved by realizing that quantum gravity effects become arbitrarily large at low temperatures. In the second part, I will describe some recent work clarifying the origin of these quantum effects from the gravitational path integral. Finally, I will describe ongoing work on identifying similar effects in certain cosmological setups.