Würzburg Seminar on Quantum Field Theory and Gravity

We will review recent progress regarding quantum aspects of black holes using a brickwall model, where the black hole horizon is replaced by an ad hoc Dirichlet boundary condition. In particular, we will describe how this model can capture certain salient quantum chaotic features black holes, described by the Spectral Form Factor of a probe scalar sector, which can be thought of as the one-loop determinant effect arising from gravitational fluctuations. We will also demonstrate how this manifestly unitary system encodes black hole quasi-normal modes in the corresponding analytic structure of the Green's function. We will end with some remarks and comments on our ongoing work with a shell-collapse model.