Title: Wormholes, emergent gauge fields, and the weak gravity conjecture

Abstract

This paper revisits the question of reconstructing bulk gauge fields as boundary operators in AdS/CFT. In the presence of the ormhole dual to the thermo field double state of two CFTs, the existence of bulk gauge fields is in some tension with the microscopic tensor factorization of the Hilbert space. Here, I explain how this tension can be resolved by splitting the gauge field into charged constituents, and I argue that this leads to a new argument for the "principle of completeness", which states that the charge lattice of a gauge theory coupled to gravity must be fully populated. I also claim that it leads to a new motivation for (and a clarification of) the "weak gravity conjecture", which I interpret as a strengthening of this principle. This setup gives a simple example of a situation where describing low-energy bulk physics in CFT language requires knowledge of high-energy bulk physics. Furthermore, this contradicts to some extent the notion of "effective conformal field theory", but in fact is an expected feature of the resolution of the black hole information problem. An analogous factorization issue exists also for the gravitational field, and I comment on several of its implications for reconstructing blackmore » hole interiors and the emergence of spacetime more generally.« less

Authors:

Harlow, Daniel ^[1]

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+ Show Author Affiliations

1. Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States). Center for the Fundamental Laws of Nature

Publication Date:

2016-01-20

Research Org.:

Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE

OSTI Identifier:

1327308

Grant/Contract Number:  

FG02-91ER40654

Resource Type:

Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:

Journal of High Energy Physics (Online)

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Name: Journal of High Energy Physics (Online); Journal Volume: 2016; Journal Issue: 1; Journal ID: ISSN 1029-8479

Publisher:

Springer Berlin

Country of Publication:

United States

Language:

English

Subject:

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS; AdS-CFT correspondence; gauge symmetry; black holes; global symmetries