Holographic JT gravity with quartic couplings

Abstract

We construct the most general theory of 2D Einstein-dilaton gravity coupled with $U(1)$ gauge fields that contains all the 2-derivative and the 4-derivative interactions allowed by the diffeomorphism invariance. We renormalise the 2D action and obtain the vacuum solution as well as the black hole solution. The vacuum solution in the UV is dominated by Lifshitz$_2$ with dynamical exponent ($z=\frac{7}{3}$) while on the other hand, the spacetime curvature diverges as we move towards the deep IR limit. We calculate the holographic stress tensor and the central charge for the boundary theory. Our analysis shows that the central charge goes as the inverse power of the coupling associated to 4-derivative interactions. We also compute the Wald entropy for 2D black holes and interpret its near horizon divergence in terms of the density of states. We compare the Wald entropy with the Cardy formula and obtain the eigen value of Virasoro operator ($L_0$) for our model. Finally, we explore the near horizon structure of 2D black holes and calculate the central charge corresponding to the CFT near horizon. We further show that the near horizon CFT may be recast as a 2D Liouville theory with higher derivative corrections. We study the Weyl invariance of this generalised Liouville theory and identify the Weyl anomaly associated to it. We also comment on the classical vacuum structure of the theory.