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 »
- Authors:
-
- Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States). Center for the Fundamental Laws of Nature
- Publication Date:
- 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
Citation Formats
Harlow, Daniel. Wormholes, emergent gauge fields, and the weak gravity conjecture. United States: N. p., 2016.
Web. doi:10.1007/JHEP01(2016)122.
Harlow, Daniel. Wormholes, emergent gauge fields, and the weak gravity conjecture. United States. doi:10.1007/JHEP01(2016)122.
Harlow, Daniel. Wed .
"Wormholes, emergent gauge fields, and the weak gravity conjecture". United States. doi:10.1007/JHEP01(2016)122. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1327308.
@article{osti_1327308,
title = {Wormholes, emergent gauge fields, and the weak gravity conjecture},
author = {Harlow, Daniel},
abstractNote = {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 black hole interiors and the emergence of spacetime more generally.},
doi = {10.1007/JHEP01(2016)122},
journal = {Journal of High Energy Physics (Online)},
number = 1,
volume = 2016,
place = {United States},
year = {2016},
month = {1}
}
Web of Science
Works referenced in this record:
Bulk and transhorizon measurements in AdS/CFT
journal, October 2012
- Heemskerk, Idse; Marolf, Donald; Polchinski, Joseph
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2012, Issue 10
Boundary-to-bulk maps for AdS causal wedges and the Reeh-Schlieder property in holography
journal, May 2014
- Morrison, Ian A.
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2014, Issue 5
Construction of bulk fields with gauge redundancy
journal, September 2012
- Heemskerk, Idse
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2012, Issue 9
Aspects of the Papadodimas-Raju proposal for the black hole interior
journal, November 2014
- Harlow, Daniel
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2014, Issue 11
Bulk locality and quantum error correction in AdS/CFT
journal, April 2015
- Almheiri, Ahmed; Dong, Xi; Harlow, Daniel
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2015, Issue 4
Hilbert space structure in quantum gravity: an algebraic perspective
journal, December 2015
- Giddings, Steven B.
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2015, Issue 12
Combing gravitational hair in 2 + 1 dimensions
journal, December 2015
- Donnelly, William; Marolf, Donald; Mintun, Eric
- Classical and Quantum Gravity, Vol. 33, Issue 2
Boundary conditions and dualities: vector fields in AdS/CFT
journal, November 2006
- Marolf, Donald; Ross, Simo F.
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2006, Issue 11
Eternal black holes in anti-de Sitter
journal, April 2003
- Maldacena, Juan
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2003, Issue 04
An apologia for firewalls
journal, September 2013
- Almheiri, Ahmed; Marolf, Donald; Polchinski, Joseph
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2013, Issue 9
Local Operators in the Eternal Black Hole
journal, November 2015
- Papadodimas, Kyriakos; Raju, Suvrat
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 115, Issue 21
Monopoles, Duality, and String Theory
journal, February 2004
- Polchinski, Joe
- International Journal of Modern Physics A, Vol. 19, Issue supp01
A expandable series of non-linear σ models with instantons
journal, December 1978
- D'Adda, A.; Lüscher, M.; Di Vecchia, P.
- Nuclear Physics B, Vol. 146, Issue 1
Instatons, the quark model, and the 1/N expansion
journal, March 1979
- Witten, Edward
- Nuclear Physics B, Vol. 149, Issue 2
The string landscape, black holes and gravity as the weakest force
journal, June 2007
- Arkani-Hamed, Nima; Motl, Luboš; Nicolis, Alberto
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2007, Issue 06
Holography from conformal field theory
journal, October 2009
- Heemskerk, Idse; Penedones, Joao; Polchinski, Joseph
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2009, Issue 10
Effective conformal theory and the flat-space limit of AdS
journal, July 2011
- Fitzpatrick, A. Liam; Katz, Emanuel; Poland, David
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2011, Issue 7
Eternal black holes and superselection in AdS/CFT
journal, December 2012
- Marolf, Donald; Wall, Aron C.
- Classical and Quantum Gravity, Vol. 30, Issue 2
Wilson loop renormalization group flows
journal, October 2011
- Polchinski, Joseph; Sully, James
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2011, Issue 10
There are no Goldstone bosons in two dimensions
journal, December 1973
- Coleman, Sidney
- Communications in Mathematical Physics, Vol. 31, Issue 4
Quantum criticality beyond the Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson paradigm
journal, October 2004
- Senthil, T.; Balents, Leon; Sachdev, Subir
- Physical Review B, Vol. 70, Issue 14
Monopoles in model via the state-operator correspondence
journal, December 2008
- Metlitski, Max A.; Hermele, Michael; Senthil, T.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 78, Issue 21
Scaling dimensions of monopole operators in the ℂ ℙ N
b −
1 $$ \mathbb{C}{\mathrm{\mathbb{P}}}^{N_b-1} $$ theory in 2 + 1 dimensions
journal, June 2015
- Dyer, Ethan; Mezei, Márk; Pufu, Silviu S.
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2015, Issue 6
Lattice formulation of the CPn−1 non-linear σ models
journal, May 1979
- Stone, Michael
- Nuclear Physics B, Vol. 152, Issue 1
The CPN−1 model: A strong coupling lattice approach
journal, May 1981
- Rabinovici, Eliezer; Samuel, Stuart
- Physics Letters B, Vol. 101, Issue 5
Path integral quantization of field theories with second-class constraints
journal, September 1976
- Senjanovic, P.
- Annals of Physics, Vol. 100, Issue 1-2
Absence of Ferromagnetism or Antiferromagnetism in One- or Two-Dimensional Isotropic Heisenberg Models
journal, November 1966
- Mermin, N. D.; Wagner, H.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 17, Issue 22
Finite-temperature behavior of the lattice abelian Higgs model
journal, December 1979
- Banks, Thomas; Rabinovici, Eliezer
- Nuclear Physics B, Vol. 160, Issue 2
A note on gauge theories coupled to gravity
journal, September 2006
- Banks, Tom; Johnson, Matt; Shomer, Assaf
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2006, Issue 09
N -flation
journal, August 2008
- Dimopoulos, S.; Kachru, S.; McGreevy, J.
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2008, Issue 08
On the dynamical generation of the Maxwell term and scale invariance
journal, July 2011
- Rabinovici, Eliezer; Smolkin, Michael
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2011, Issue 7
Naturalness and the Weak Gravity Conjecture
journal, July 2014
- Cheung, Clifford; Remmen, Grant N.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 113, Issue 5
Infrared consistency and the weak gravity conjecture
journal, December 2014
- Cheung, Clifford; Remmen, Grant N.
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2014, Issue 12
Multiple shocks
journal, December 2014
- Shenker, Stephen H.; Stanford, Douglas
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2014, Issue 12
Holographic Derivation of Entanglement Entropy from the anti–de Sitter Space/Conformal Field Theory Correspondence
journal, May 2006
- Ryu, Shinsei; Takayanagi, Tadashi
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 96, Issue 18
A covariant holographic entanglement entropy proposal
journal, July 2007
- Hubeny, Veronika E.; Rangamani, Mukund; Takayanagi, Tadashi
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2007, Issue 07
The gravity dual of a density matrix
journal, July 2012
- Czech, Bartłomiej; Karczmarek, Joanna L.; Nogueira, Fernando
- Classical and Quantum Gravity, Vol. 29, Issue 15
Maximin surfaces, and the strong subadditivity of the covariant holographic entanglement entropy
journal, November 2014
- Wall, Aron C.
- Classical and Quantum Gravity, Vol. 31, Issue 22
Causality & holographic entanglement entropy
journal, December 2014
- Headrick, Matthew; Hubeny, Veronika E.; Lawrence, Albion
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2014, Issue 12
Holographic quantum error-correcting codes: toy models for the bulk/boundary correspondence
journal, June 2015
- Pastawski, Fernando; Yoshida, Beni; Harlow, Daniel
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2015, Issue 6
The off-shell black hole
journal, July 1995
- Carlip, Steven; Teitelboim, Claudio
- Classical and Quantum Gravity, Vol. 12, Issue 7
Building up spacetime with quantum entanglement
journal, June 2010
- Van Raamsdonk, Mark
- General Relativity and Gravitation, Vol. 42, Issue 10
Gauge-Gravity Duality and the Black Hole Interior
journal, October 2013
- Marolf, Donald; Polchinski, Joseph
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 111, Issue 17
Works referencing / citing this record:
Racing through the swampland: de Sitter uplift vs. weak gravity
journal, September 2018
- Moritz, Jakob; Van Riet, Thomas
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2018, Issue 9
The factorization problem in Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity
journal, February 2020
- Harlow, Daniel; Jafferis, Daniel
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2020, Issue 2
Racing through the swampland: de Sitter uplift vs. weak gravity
journal, September 2018
- Moritz, Jakob; Van Riet, Thomas
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2018, Issue 9
A Tower Weak Gravity Conjecture from Infrared Consistency
journal, May 2018
- Andriolo, Stefano; Junghans, Daniel; Noumi, Toshifumi
- Fortschritte der Physik, Vol. 66, Issue 5
A Spin-2 Conjecture on the Swampland
journal, December 2018
- Klaewer, Daniel; Lüst, Dieter; Palti, Eran
- Fortschritte der Physik, Vol. 67, Issue 1-2
The Swampland: Introduction and Review
journal, April 2019
- Palti, Eran
- Fortschritte der Physik, Vol. 67, Issue 6
Superselection sectors of gravitational subregions
journal, January 2019
- Camps, Joan
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2019, Issue 1
Entanglement entropy and superselection sectors. Part I. Global symmetries
journal, February 2020
- Casini, Horacio; Huerta, Marina; Magán, Javier M.
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2020, Issue 2
Superrotation charge and supertranslation hair on black holes
journal, May 2017
- Hawking, Stephen W.; Perry, Malcolm J.; Strominger, Andrew
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2017, Issue 5
Holographic Renyi entropy from quantum error correction
journal, May 2019
- Akers, Chris; Rath, Pratik
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2019, Issue 5
Modular symmetries and the swampland conjectures
journal, May 2019
- Gonzalo, E.; Ibáñez, L. E.; Uranga, A. M.
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2019, Issue 5
Swampland variations on a theme by KKLT
journal, May 2019
- Blumenhagen, Ralph; Kläwer, Daniel; Schlechter, Lorenz
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2019, Issue 5
Evidence for a sublattice weak gravity conjecture
journal, August 2017
- Heidenreich, Ben; Reece, Matthew; Rudelius, Tom
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2017, Issue 8
Infinite distances in field space and massless towers of states
journal, August 2018
- Grimm, Thomas W.; Palti, Eran; Valenzuela, Irene
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2018, Issue 8
Local subsystems in gauge theory and gravity
journal, September 2016
- Donnelly, William; Freidel, Laurent
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2016, Issue 9
The Weak Gravity Conjecture in three dimensions
journal, October 2016
- Montero, Miguel; Shiu, Gary; Soler, Pablo
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2016, Issue 10
Tensionless strings and the weak gravity conjecture
journal, October 2018
- Lee, Seung-Joo; Lerche, Wolfgang; Weigand, Timo
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2018, Issue 10
Repulsive forces and the weak gravity conjecture
journal, October 2019
- Heidenreich, Ben; Reece, Matthew; Rudelius, Tom
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2019, Issue 10
Firewalls vs. scrambling
journal, October 2019
- Yoshida, Beni
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2019, Issue 10
Weak gravity conjecture, multiple point principle and the standard model landscape
journal, November 2017
- Hamada, Yuta; Shiu, Gary
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2017, Issue 11
Constraining neutrino masses, the cosmological constant and BSM physics from the weak gravity conjecture
journal, November 2017
- Ibáñez, Luis E.; Martín-Lozano, Víctor; Valenzuela, Irene
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2017, Issue 11
Black hole entropy and soft hair
journal, December 2018
- Haco, Sasha; Hawking, Stephen W.; Perry, Malcolm J.
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2018, Issue 12
On the entanglement entropy of Maxwell theory: a condensed matter perspective
journal, December 2018
- Pretko, Michael
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2018, Issue 12
Shrinking of operators in quantum error correction and AdS/CFT
journal, December 2019
- Hirai, Hayato
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2019, Issue 12
The Ryu–Takayanagi Formula from Quantum Error Correction
journal, May 2017
- Harlow, Daniel
- Communications in Mathematical Physics, Vol. 354, Issue 3
Quantum-First Gravity
journal, February 2019
- Giddings, Steven B.
- Foundations of Physics, Vol. 49, Issue 3
Weak Gravity Conjecture and extremal black holes
journal, June 2019
- Cottrell, William; Shiu, Gary; Soler, Pablo
- Science China Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy, Vol. 62, Issue 11
Conformal symmetry and its breaking in two-dimensional nearly anti-de Sitter space
journal, November 2016
- Maldacena, Juan; Stanford, Douglas; Yang, Zhenbin
- Progress of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Vol. 2016, Issue 12
Relating the scalar weak gravity conjecture and the swampland distance conjecture for an accelerating universe
journal, October 2019
- Brahma, Suddhasattwa; Hossain, Md. Wali
- Physical Review D, Vol. 100, Issue 8
Reconstruction of Bulk Operators within the Entanglement Wedge in Gauge-Gravity Duality
journal, July 2016
- Dong, Xi; Harlow, Daniel; Wall, Aron C.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 117, Issue 2
Emergence of Weak Coupling at Large Distance in Quantum Gravity
journal, August 2018
- Heidenreich, Ben; Reece, Matthew; Rudelius, Tom
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 121, Issue 5
Constraints on Symmetries from Holography
journal, May 2019
- Harlow, Daniel; Ooguri, Hirosi
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 122, Issue 19
Weak Gravity Conjecture from Unitarity and Causality
journal, July 2019
- Hamada, Yuta; Noumi, Toshifumi; Shiu, Gary
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 123, Issue 5
The Weak Gravity Conjecture and emergence from an ultraviolet cutoff
journal, April 2018
- Heidenreich, Ben; Reece, Matthew; Rudelius, Tom
- The European Physical Journal C, Vol. 78, Issue 4
The Hilbert space of quantum gravity is locally finite-dimensional
journal, October 2017
- Bao, Ning; Carroll, Sean M.; Singh, Ashmeet
- International Journal of Modern Physics D, Vol. 26, Issue 12
On the construction of charged operators inside an eternal black hole
journal, January 2017
- Guica, Monica; Jafferis, Daniel
- SciPost Physics, Vol. 3, Issue 2