Quantum tunneling and black hole spectroscopy

The entropy-area spectrum of a black hole has been a long-standing and unsolved problem. Based on a recent methodology introduced by two of the authors, for the black hole radiation (Hawking effect) as tunneling effect, we obtain the entropy spectrum of a black hole. In Einstein's gravity, we show that both entropy and area spectrum are evenly spaced. But in more general theories (like Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity), although the entropy spectrum is equispaced, the corresponding area spectrum is not. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.