Apparent Horizons Associated with Dynamical Black Hole Entropy

Abstract: We define entropic marginally outer trapped surfaces (E-MOTSs) as a generalization of apparent horizons. We then show that, under first-order perturbations around a stationary black hole, the dynamical black hole entropy proposed by Hollands, Wald, and Zhang, defined on a background Killing horizon, can be expressed as the Wall entropy evaluated on an E-MOTS associated with it. Our result ensures that the Hollands-Wald-Zhang entropy reduces to the standard Wald entropy in each stationary regime of a dynamical black hole, thereby reinforcing the robustness of the dynamical entropy formulation.