Wormholes and black hole microstates in AdS/CFT

Abstract: It has long been known that the coarse-grained approximation to the black hole density of states can be computed using classical Euclidean gravity. In this talk I will argue for another entry in the dictionary between Euclidean gravity and black hole physics, namely that Euclidean wormholes describe a coarse-grained approximation to the energy level statistics of black hole microstates. We do so by using the method of constrained instantons to obtain an integral representation of wormhole amplitudes in Einstein gravity and in full-fledged AdS/CFT. These amplitudes are non-perturbative corrections to the two-boundary problem in AdS quantum gravity. The full amplitude is likely UV sensitive, dominated by small wormholes, but it admits an integral transformation with a macroscopic, weakly curved saddle-point approximation. The saddle is the "double cone" geometry of Saad, Shenker, and Stanford, with fixed moduli. In the boundary description this saddle appears to dominate a smeared version of the connected two-point function of the black hole density of states, and suggests level repulsion in the microstate spectrum. I will also discuss the stability of these wormholes to small fluctuations and to brane nucleation. Our results indicate a factorization paradox in AdS/CFT, and I will discuss a potential mechanism for understanding it.

HEP - theory

Audience: researchers in the topic

SISSA HEP seminars

Series comments: Description: Research seminars on theoretical high energy physics

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