arXiv subjects

Donald Marolf

Publications and source records attributed to Donald Marolf.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

arXiv2013

Gauge/Gravity Duality and the Black Hole Interior

We present a further argument that typical black holes with field theory duals have firewalls at the horizon. This argument makes no reference to entanglement between the black hole and any distant system, and so is not evaded by identifying degrees of freedom inside the black hole with those outside. We also address the ER=EPR conjecture of Maldacena and Susskind, arguing that the correlations in generic highly entangled states cannot be geometrized as a smooth wormhole.

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arXiv2013

An Apologia for Firewalls

We address proposed alternatives to the black hole firewall. We show that embedding the interior Hilbert space of an old black hole into the Hilbert space of the early radiation is inconsistent, as is embedding the semi-classical interior of an AdS black hole into any dual CFT Hilbert space. We develop the use of large AdS black holes as a system to sharpen the firewall argument. We also reiterate arguments that unitary non-local theories can avoid firewalls only if the non-localities are suitably dramatic.

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arXiv2013

Perturbative S-matrix for massive scalar fields in global de Sitter space

We construct a perturbative S-matrix for interacting massive scalar fields in global de Sitter space. Our S-matrix is formulated in terms of asymptotic particle states in the far past and future, taking appropriate care for light fields whose wavefunctions decay only very slowly near the de Sitter conformal boundaries. An alternative formulation expresses this S-matrix in terms of residues of poles in analytically-continued Euclidean correlators (computed in perturbation theory), making it clear that the standard Minkowski-space result is obtained in the flat-space limit. Our S-matrix transforms properly under CPT, is invariant under the de Sitter isometries and perturbative field redefinitions, and is unitary. This unitarity implies a de Sitter version of the optical theorem. We explicitly verify these properties to second order in the coupling for a general cubic interaction, including both tree- and loop-level contributions. Contrary to other statements in the literature, we find that a particle of any positive mass may decay at tree level to any number of particles, each of arbitrary positive masses. In particular, even very light fields (in the complementary series of de Sitter representations) are not protected from tree-level decays.

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arXiv2013

Black Holes: Complementarity or Firewalls?

We argue that the following three statements cannot all be true: (i) Hawking radiation is in a pure state, (ii) the information carried by the radiation is emitted from the region near the horizon, with low energy effective field theory valid beyond some microscopic distance from the horizon, and (iii) the infalling observer encounters nothing unusual at the horizon. Perhaps the most conservative resolution is that the infalling observer burns up at the horizon. Alternatives would seem to require novel dynamics that nevertheless cause notable violations of semiclassical physics at macroscopic distances from the horizon.

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arXiv2013

AdS flowing black funnels: Stationary AdS black holes with non-Killing horizons and heat transport in the dual CFT

We construct stationary non-equilibrium black funnels locally asymptotic to global AdS4 in vacuum Einstein-Hilbert gravity with negative cosmological constant. These are non-compactly-generated black holes in which a single connected bulk horizon extends to meet the conformal boundary. Thus the induced (conformal) boundary metric has smooth horizons as well. In our examples, the boundary spacetime contains a pair of black holes connected through the bulk by a tubular bulk horizon. Taking one boundary black hole to be hotter than the other ($ΔT \neq 0$) prohibits equilibrium. The result is a so-called flowing funnel, a stationary bulk black hole with a non-Killing horizon that may be said to transport heat toward the cooler boundary black hole. While generators of the bulk future horizon evolve toward zero expansion in the far future, they begin at finite affine parameter with infinite expansion on a singular past horizon characterized by power-law divergences with universal exponents. We explore both the horizon generators and the boundary stress tensor in detail. While most of our results are numerical, a semi-analytic fluid/gravity description can be obtained by passing to a one-parameter generalization of the above boundary conditions. The new parameter detunes the temperatures $T_{bulk BH}$ and $T_{bndy BH}$ of the bulk and boundary black holes, and we may then take α= $T_\mathrm{bndy BH}/T_\mathrm{bulk BH}$ and ΔT small to control the accuracy of the fluid-gravity approximation. In the small α, ΔT regime we find excellent agreement with our numerical solutions. For our cases the agreement also remains quite good even for $α\sim 0.8$. In terms of a dual CFT, our α= 1 solutions describe heat transport via a large N version of Hawking radiation through a deconfined plasma that couples efficiently to both boundary black holes.

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arXiv2013

Eternal Black Holes and Superselection in AdS/CFT

It has been argued i) that Lorentz-signature solutions with wormholes connecting n asymptotically AdS regions describe bulk quantum states dual to n entangled but non-interacting CFTs and ii) that such bulk wormhole states should be identified with similar entangled but non-interacting bulk systems, each describing quantum geometries with only a single asymptotic region. But if the wormhole is to behave semiclassically, we show that conjecture (ii) cannot hold. Instead, the theory of asymptotically AdS bulk quantum gravity must admit superselection sectors with respect to the CFT observables that are labeled by the type of wormhole connections allowed between black holes. Moreover, these superselection sectors are indistinguishable in the dual CFT. Finally, we describe restrictions on the possible superselection sectors associated with the spin-statistics relation and the expectation that black holes lying in distinct asymptotically AdS regions may be approximated by well-separated black holes in a single asymptotically AdS region.

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arXiv2012

Outgoing gravitational shock-wave at the inner horizon: The late-time limit of black hole interiors

We investigate the interiors of 3+1 dimensional asymptotically flat charged and rotating black holes as described by observers who fall into the black holes at late times, long after any perturbations of the exterior region have decayed. In the strict limit of late infall times, the initial experiences of such observers are precisely described by the region of the limiting stationary geometry to the past of its inner horizon. However, we argue that late infall-time observers encounter a null shockwave at the location of the would-be outgoing inner horizon. In particular, for spherically symmetric black hole spacetimes we demonstrate that freely-falling observers experience a metric discontinuity across this shock, that is, a gravitational shock-wave. Furthermore, the magnitude of this shock is at least of order unity. A similar phenomenon of metric discontinuity appears to take place at the inner horizon of a generically-perturbed spinning black hole. We compare the properties of this null shockwave singularity with those of the null weak singularity that forms at the Cauchy horizon.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2012

Phase Spaces for asymptotically de Sitter Cosmologies

We construct two types of phase spaces for asymptotically de Sitter Einstein-Hilbert gravity in each spacetime dimension $d \ge 3$. One type contains solutions asymptotic to the expanding spatially-flat ($k=0$) cosmological patch of de Sitter space while the other is asymptotic to the expanding hyperbolic $(k=-1)$ patch. Each phase space has a non-trivial asymptotic symmetry group (ASG) which includes the isometry group of the corresponding de Sitter patch. For $d=3$ and $k=-1$ our ASG also contains additional generators and leads to a Virasoro algebra with vanishing central charge. Furthermore, we identify an interesting algebra (even larger than the ASG) containing two Virasoro algebras related by a reality condition and having imaginary central charges $\pm i \frac{3\ell}{2G}$. Our charges agree with those obtained previously using dS/CFT methods for the same asymptotic Killing fields showing that (at least some of) the dS/CFT charges act on a well-defined phase space. Along the way we show that, despite the lack of local degrees of freedom, the $d=3, k=-1$ phase space is non-trivial even in pure $Λ> 0$ Einstein-Hilbert gravity due to the existence of a family of `wormhole' solutions labeled by their angular momentum, a mass-like parameter $θ_0$, the topology of future infinity ($I^+$), and perhaps additional internal moduli. These solutions are $Λ> 0$ analogues of BTZ black holes and exhibit a corresponding mass gap relative to empty de Sitter.

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arXiv2012

Bulk and Transhorizon Measurements in AdS/CFT

We discuss the construction of bulk operators in asymptotically AdS spacetimes, including the interiors of AdS black holes. We use this to address the question "If Schrodinger's cat were behind the horizon of an AdS black hole, could we determine its state by a measurement in the dual CFT?"

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arXiv2012

Causality and the AdS Dirichlet problem

The (planar) AdS Dirichlet problem has previously been shown to exhibit superluminal hydrodynamic sound modes. This problem is defined by bulk gravitational dynamics with Dirichlet boundary conditions imposed on a rigid timelike cut-off surface. We undertake a careful examination of this set-up and argue that, in most cases, the propagation of information between points on the Dirichlet hypersurface is nevertheless causal with respect to the induced light cones. In particular, the high-frequency dynamics is causal in this sense. There are however two exceptions and both involve boundary gravitons whose propagation is not constrained by the Einstein equations. These occur in i) AdS$_3$, where the boundary gravitons generally do not respect the induced light cones on the boundary, and ii) Rindler space, where they are related to the infinite speed of sound in incompressible fluids. We discuss implications for the fluid/gravity correspondence with rigid Dirichlet boundaries and for the black hole membrane paradigm.

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arXiv2012

Flowing Funnels: Heat sources for field theories and the AdS_3 dual of CFT_2 Hawking radiation

We construct the general 2+1 dimensional asymptotically AdS_3 solution dual to a stationary 1+1 CFT state on a black hole background. These states involve heat transport by the CFT between the 1+1 black hole and infinity (or between two 1+1 black holes), and so describe the AdS dual of CFT Hawking radiation. Although the CFT stress tensor is typically singular at the past horizon of the 1+1 black hole, the bulk 2+1-dimensional solutions are everywhere smooth, and in fact are diffeomorphic to AdS_3. In particular, we find that Unruh states of the CFT on any finite-temperature 1+1 black hole background are described by extreme horizons in the bulk.

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arXiv2011

Banishing AdS ghosts with a UV cutoff

A recent attempt to make sense of scalars in AdS with "Neumann boundary conditions" outside of the usual BF-window $-(d/2)^2 < m^2 l^2 < -(d/2)^2 + 1$ led to pathologies including (depending on the precise context) either IR divergences or the appearance of ghosts. Here we argue that such ghosts may be banished by imposing a UV cutoff. It is also possible to achieve this goal in certain UV completions. An example is the above AdS theory with a radial cutoff supplemented by particular boundary conditions on the cutoff surface. In this case we explicitly identify a region of parameter space for which the theory is ghost free. At low energies, this theory may be interpreted as the standard dual CFT (defined with "Dirichlet" boundary conditions) interacting with an extra scalar via an irrelevant interaction. We also discuss the relationship to recent works on holographic fermi surfaces and quantum criticality.

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arXiv2011

de Sitter invariance of the dS graviton vacuum

The two-point function of linearized gravitons on de Sitter space is infrared divergent in the standard transverse traceless synchronous gauge defined by $k=0$ cosmological coordinates (also called conformal or Poincare coordinates). We show that this divergence can be removed by adding a linearized diffeomorphism to each mode function; i.e., by an explicit change of gauge. It follows that the graviton vacuum state is well-defined and de Sitter invariant in agreement with various earlier arguments.

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arXiv2011

Black holes and branes in supergravity

This book chapter presents a brief introduction to black holes and branes in supergravity, focussing on 11-dimensional supergravity and type II supergravities in 10-dimension. The chapter is aimed at graduate students who have completed a standard course in general relativity. It is an ammended and slightly updated version of arXiv:gr-qc/9908045. In addition to describing specific solutions, brief discussions of p-form gauge fields, Kaluza-Klein reduction, (local) supersymmetry, T- and S-dualities in supergravity, and string perturbation theory are included to provide context.

hep-th↗

arXiv2011

AdS/CFT beyond the unitarity bound

Scalars in AdS${}_{d+1}$ with squared masses in the Breitenlohner-Freedman window $-d^2/4 \le m^2 < -d^2/4 +1$ (in units with the AdS scale $\ell$ set to 1) are known to enjoy a variety of boundary conditions. For larger masses $m^2 > -d^2/4 +1$, unitarity bounds in possible dual CFTs suggest that such general boundary conditions should lead to ghosts. We show that this is not always the case as, for conformally-invariant boundary conditions in Poincaré AdS that would naively violate unitarity bounds, the system is generically ghost-free. Conflicts with unitarity bounds are avoided due to the presence of unexpected pure gauge modes and an associated infrared divergence. The expected ghosts appear when the IR divergence is removed either by deforming these boundary conditions or considering global AdS.

hep-th↗

arXiv2011

The IR stability of de Sitter QFT: Physical initial conditions

This work uses Lorentz-signature in-in perturbation theory to analyze the late-time behavior of correlators in time-dependent interacting massive scalar field theory in de Sitter space. We study a scenario recently considered by Krotov and Polyakov in which the coupling $g$ turns on smoothly at finite time, starting from $g=0$ in the far past where the state is taken to be the (free) Bunch-Davies vacuum. Our main result is that the resulting correlators (which we compute at the one-loop level) approach those of the interacting Hartle-Hawking state at late times. We argue that similar results should hold for other physically-motivated choices of initial conditions. This behavior is to be expected from recent quantum "no hair" theorems for interacting massive scalar field theory in de Sitter space which established similar results to all orders in perturbation theory for a dense set of states in the Hilbert space. Our current work i) indicates that physically motivated initial conditions lie in this dense set, ii) provides a Lorentz-signature counter-part to the Euclidean techniques used to prove such theorems, and iii) provides an explicit example of the relevant renormalization techniques.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2011

Conformal field theories in anti-de Sitter space

In this paper we discuss the dynamics of conformal field theories on anti-de Sitter space, focussing on the special case of the N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory on AdS_4. We argue that the choice of boundary conditions, in particular for the gauge field, has a large effect on the dynamics. For example, for weak coupling, one of two natural choices of boundary conditions for the gauge field leads to a large N deconfinement phase transition as a function of the temperature, while the other does not. For boundary conditions that preserve supersymmetry, the strong coupling dynamics can be analyzed using S-duality (relevant for g_{YM} >> 1), utilizing results of Gaiotto and Witten, as well as by using the AdS/CFT correspondence (relevant for large N and large 't Hooft coupling). We argue that some very specific choices of boundary conditions lead to a simple dual gravitational description for this theory, while for most choices the gravitational dual is not known. In the cases where the gravitational dual is known, we discuss the phase structure at large 't Hooft coupling.

hep-th↗

arXiv2011

On the Equivalence between Euclidean and In-In Formalisms in de Sitter QFT

We study the relation between two sets of correlators in interacting quantum field theory on de Sitter space. The first are correlators computed using in-in perturbation theory in the expanding cosmological patch of de Sitter space (also known as the conformal patch, or the Poincaré patch), and for which the free propagators are taken to be those of the free Euclidean vacuum. The second are correlators obtained by analytic continuation from Euclidean de Sitter; i.e., they are correlators in the fully interacting Hartle-Hawking state. We give an analytic argument that these correlators coincide for interacting massive scalar fields with any $m^2 > 0$. We also verify this result via direct calculation in simple examples. The correspondence holds diagram by diagram, and at any finite value of an appropriate Pauli-Villars regulator mass M. Along the way, we note interesting connections between various prescriptions for perturbation theory in general static spacetimes with bifurcate Killing horizons.

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