There has been substantial interest, as of late, in the quantum-corrected form of the Bekenstein-Hawking black hole entropy. The consensus viewpoint is that the leading-order correction should be a logarithm of the horizon area; however, the value of the logarithmic prefactor remains a point of notable controversy. Very recently, Hod has employed statistical arguments that constrain this prefactor to be a non-negative integer. In the current paper, we invoke some independent considerations to argue that the "best guess" for the prefactor might simply be zero. Significantly, this value complies with the prior prediction and, moreover, seems suggestive of some fundamental symmetry.
I. MOTIVATIONIt has long been accepted that black holes possess an intrinsic entropy which (for at least a wide class of models) can be determined by way of the famous Bekenstein-Hawking area law [1,2]; that is,where S BH is the entropy in question and A is the cross-sectional area (in Planck units) of the black hole horizon. Here and throughout, all fundamental constants are set equal to unity. Moreover, we will focus on the physically realistic case of only four uncompactified spacetime dimensions, as well as the case of a black hole that is neutral and static modulo quantum fluctuations (although many of our statements have more general applicability). Also, we will always assume the semi-classical regime of a macroscopically large black hole or A >> 1. Further note that the above relation is, in spite of the implied presence ofh (in the denominator), strictly a classical one. Although the black hole area law initially followed from thermodynamic considerations (e.g., protecting the second law of thermodynamics in the presence of a black hole [1]), it is 1