Path Integrals and the Statistical Thermodynamics of Black Holes.

The path integral is an important element in modern approaches to the quantization of the gravitational field. Path integral representations of partition functions for static and stationary black hole systems as well as path integrals for minisuperspace models of cosmology are presented. The functional integral is defined throughout as a sum over Lorentzian histories. A consistent formulation of Feynman's prescription to construct partition functions in terms of path integrals for general gravitational systems is presented and contrasted with other "Euclideanization" prescriptions. It is shown that the central object in the description of black hole systems is the gravitational action. In particular, the additivity of the entropies of matter and black holes in thermal equilibrium is a consequence of the additivity of their corresponding actions, and thermodynamic potentials like the energy or the pressure are not in general addivite when gravity plays an important role. Partition functions as stationary phase approximations of functional integrals for all the thermodynamic ensembles are then constructed by including gravitation as a part of the thermodynamical system. We show that a complex geometry is required to derive the thermodynamic properties of stationary geometries from the sum over histories. The corresponding real "thermodynamical" action is calculated explicitly and the thermodynamical data that imply thermal equilibrium in the presence of a rotating black hole in interaction with matter fields are presented and related to geometrical data. Some of the consequences for Kerr-Newman black hole systems are also discussed. For minisuperspace cosmologies the Lorentzian path integral is a Green function for the Wheeler-DeWitt operator, and its real part is a solution to the Wheeler -DeWitt equation. It is computed explicitly for the de Sitter minisuperspace model. The resulting Green function is then related to both the Hartle-Hawking and tunneling wave functions of the Universe. In particular, the real part of the Green function is a product of Hartle-Hawking wave functions.