Wormholes and black hole microstates in AdS/CFT

Journal Article · Wed Sep 01 00:00:00 EDT 2021 · Journal of High Energy Physics (Online)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep09(2021)001· OSTI ID:1851025

Cotler, Jordan ^[1]; Jensen, Kristan ^[2]

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1. Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States). Society of Fellows; Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States)
2. Univ. of Victoria, BC (Canada). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy

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 work we 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. To do so we use 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 we show 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. Using these methods we further study Euclidean wormholes in pure Einstein gravity and in IIB supergravity on Euclidean AdS₅×S⁵. We address the perturbative stability of these backgrounds and study brane nucleation instabilities in 10d supergravity. In particular, brane nucleation instabilities of the Euclidean wormholes are lifted by the analytic continuation required to obtain the Lorentzian spectral form factor from gravity. Our results indicate a factorization paradox in AdS/CFT.

• Research Organization: Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC)
• Grant/Contract Number: SC0007870
• OSTI ID: 1851025
• Journal Information: Journal of High Energy Physics (Online), Journal Name: Journal of High Energy Physics (Online) Journal Issue: 9 Vol. 2021; ISSN 1029-8479
• Publisher: Springer Nature
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
AdS-CFT correspondence
Physics
black holes