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arXiv · 2504.14586

Further Evidence Against a Semiclassical Baby Universe in AdS/CFT

Netta Engelhardt·Elliott Gesteau
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Abstract

We argue that a large class of asymptotically AdS geometries with a semiclassical baby universe cannot be realized within the AdS/CFT correspondence. This in particular resolves a recent puzzle introduced by Antonini and Rath, in which a single CFT state appeared to simultaneously describe an AdS spacetime with a baby universe and one without. We construct a low-energy (and low complexity) boundary operator whose expectation values in the descriptions with and without the baby universe cannot match if the baby universe is semiclassical. This operator conclusively identifies the actual bulk dual: the spacetime without a semiclassical baby universe. This result assumes only that AdS/CFT admits an extrapolate dictionary and an asymptotically isometric encoding of the causal wedge into the dual CFT, without which the correspondence may well be vacuous.

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Netta Engelhardt, Elliott Gesteau. 2025-04-20. Further Evidence Against a Semiclassical Baby Universe in AdS/CFT. https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.14586

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