貝肯斯坦從涉及黑洞的啟發式觀點導出此上限式。如果存在系統違反此不等式,也就是有太多的熵,則貝肯斯坦認為這將違反熱力學第二定律。1995年,泰德·雅各布森證明了愛因斯坦場方程[a]可以藉由假設貝肯斯坦上限和熱力學定律的真實性而導出[2][3]。然而,雖然一些理論已經表明某種形式的上限必須存在,以使熱力學和廣義相對論相互一致,但該上限的確切表述一直是人們爭論的一個問題[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]。
Ted Jacobson, "Thermodynamics of Spacetime: The Einstein Equation of State", Physical Review Letters, Vol. 75, Issue 7 (August 14, 1995), pp. 1260-1263, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.75.1260, Bibcode:1995PhRvL..75.1260J. Also at , April 4, 1995. Also available here (頁面存檔備份,存於網際網路檔案館) and here (頁面存檔備份,存於網際網路檔案館). Additionally available as an entry (頁面存檔備份,存於網際網路檔案館)in the Gravity Research Foundation's 1995 essay competition..
Lee Smolin, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (New York, N.Y.: Basic Books, 2002), pp. 173 and 175, ISBN 0-465-07836-2, .
Raphael Bousso, "Holography in general space-times", Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 1999, Issue 6 (June 1999), Art. No. 28, 24 pages, doi:10.1088/1126-6708/1999/06/028, Bibcode:1999JHEP...06..028B. Mirror link. Also at , June 3, 1999.
Raphael Bousso, "A covariant entropy conjecture", Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 1999, Issue 7 (July 1999), Art. No. 4, 34 pages, doi:10.1088/1126-6708/1999/07/004, Bibcode:1999JHEP...07..004B. Mirror link. Also at , May 24, 1999.
Raphael Bousso, "The holographic principle for general backgrounds", Classical and Quantum Gravity, Vol. 17, No. 5 (March 7, 2000), pp. 997-1005, doi:10.1088/0264-9381/17/5/309, Bibcode:2000CQGra..17..997B. Also at , November 2, 1999.
Jacob D. Bekenstein, "Holographic bound from second law of thermodynamics", Physics Letters B, Vol. 481, Issues 2-4 (May 25, 2000), pp. 339-345, doi:10.1016/S0370-2693(00)00450-0, Bibcode:2000PhLB..481..339B. Also at , March 8, 2000.
Raphael Bousso, Éanna É. Flanagan and Donald Marolf, "Simple sufficient conditions for the generalized covariant entropy bound", Physical Review D, Vol. 68, Issue 6 (September 15, 2003), Art. No. 064001, 7 pages, doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.68.064001, Bibcode:2003PhRvD..68f4001B. Also at , May 19, 2003.
Jacob D. Bekenstein, "Black holes and information theory", Contemporary Physics, Vol. 45, Issue 1 (January 2004), pp. 31-43, doi:10.1080/00107510310001632523, Bibcode:2003ConPh..45...31B. Also at , November 9, 2003. Also at , November 9, 2003.
Frank J. Tipler, "The structure of the world from pure numbers" (頁面存檔備份,存於網際網路檔案館), Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 68, No. 4 (April 2005), pp. 897-964, doi:10.1088/0034-4885/68/4/R04, Bibcode:2005RPPh...68..897T.. Also released as "Feynman-Weinberg Quantum Gravity and the Extended Standard Model as a Theory of Everything" (頁面存檔備份,存於網際網路檔案館), , April 24, 2007. Tipler gives a number of arguments for maintaining that Bekenstein's original formulation of the bound is the correct form. See in particular the paragraph beginning with "A few points ..." on p. 903 of the Rep. Prog. Phys. paper (or p. 9 of the arXiv version), and the discussions on the Bekenstein bound that follow throughout the paper.
Frank J. Tipler, "The structure of the world from pure numbers" (頁面存檔備份,存於網際網路檔案館), Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 68, No. 4 (April 2005), pp. 897-964, doi:10.1088/0034-4885/68/4/R04, Bibcode:2005RPPh...68..897T, p. 902. Mirror link. Also released as "Feynman-Weinberg Quantum Gravity and the Extended Standard Model as a Theory of Everything" (頁面存檔備份,存於網際網路檔案館), , April 24, 2007, p. 8.
A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking, Bantam Books, 1988.
- Jacob D. Bekenstein, "Bekenstein bound" (頁面存檔備份,存於網際網路檔案館) , Scholarpedia, Vol. 3, No. 10 (2008), p. 7374, doi:10.4249/scholarpedia.7374.
- Jacob D. Bekenstein, "Bekenstein-Hawking entropy" (頁面存檔備份,存於網際網路檔案館) , Scholarpedia, Vol. 3, No. 10 (2008), p. 7375, doi:10.4249/scholarpedia.7375.
- Jacob D. Bekenstein's website (頁面存檔備份,存於網際網路檔案館) at the Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which contains a number of articles on the Bekenstein bound.