arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Tom Banks.
We review arguments that the cosmological constant (c.c.) should not be thought of as a local contribution to the energy density, but rather as an infrared boundary condition specifying particular models of quantum gravity.
A brief review of "Holographic Space-Time" in the light of the seminal contributions of Jacob Bekenstein.
We argue that soft gravitational radiation leads to a misidentification of the angular momentum of stars seen in distant galaxies, and that this could be interpreted as an additional mass inside the orbit of the star. It is tempting to identify this with the modifications of Newtonian dynamics that have been claimed [1] to eliminate the necessity for dark matter. Simple estimates of the effect show that it is very small and does not have the right functional form to explain the Tully-Fisher relation. The effect does grow with the age of the universe, but if our universe is indeed dominated by a cosmological constant, then most galaxies will disappear beyond the cosmological horizon before the effect is observable. We conjecture that this effect can be thought of as a new kind of gravitational memory: a rotation of frames at infinity, relative to those near the galaxy. One of the conclusions of our work is that at very large times the linearized classical treatment of this problem is inadequate, and should be replaced by Weinberg's soft photon resummation. However, these times are so long that they do not appear relevant to the universe in which we live. Neither method of calculation leads to a significant effect on galaxy evolution.
We derive exact equations for a broken scale invariance of the homogeneous electron gas HEG, and show that they lead to a closed non-linear integral equation for the density- density correlation function when evaluated to leading order in the 1/N expansion. More generally, the identity leads to a sequence of more refined systems of equations, which close on a finite number of one plasmon irreducible (1PLI) correlation functions.
We argue that flat space amplitudes for the process $ 2 \to n$ gravitons at center of mass energies $\sqrt{s}$ much less than the Planck scale, will coincide approximately with amplitudes calculated from correlators of a boundary CFT for AdS space of radius $R\gg L_P$, only when $n < R/L_P$ . For larger values of $n$ in AdS space, insisting that all the incoming energy enters "the arena" [arXiv:hep-th/9901079], implies the production of black holes, whereas there is no black hole production in the flat space amplitudes. We also argue, from unitarity, that flat space amplitudes for all $n$ are necessary to reconstruct the complicated singularity at zero momentum in the $2 \to 2$ amplitude, which can therefore not be reproduced as the limit of an AdS calculation. Applying similar reasoning to amplitudes for real black hole production in flat space, we argue that unitarity of the flat space S-matrix cannot be assessed or inferred from properties of CFT correlators.
I propose that much recent history can be explained by hypothesizing that sometime during the last quarter of 2016, the history of the world underwent a macroscopic quantum tunneling event, creating, according to the Many Worlds Interpretation, a new branch of the multiverse in which my consciousness and that of my readers is now trapped. The failure of much political polling is then understood by assuming that the particular branch we are on had very low amplitude in the quantum wave function of the multiverse. In this view, one must take a different attitude towards alternative facts than that proposed by the mainstream media. We know that quantum tunneling can change the low energy laws of physics in the different branches of the wave function. Alternative facts may simply be the reflection of the media's ignorance of the state of the world after a quantum transition of this magnitude.
In a recent paper, Ooguri and Vafa [arXiv:1610.04564] argued that a mild extension of the Weak Gravity conjecture\cite{weakgrav} led to the conclusion that the only models of quantum gravity in AdS space with "radius large compared to the string scale" were models with exact AdS-SUSY. This note clarifies certain obscure parts of their argument by reinterpreting it as a statement about brane configurations in flat space. In that context the statement is that stable non-supersymmetric configurations of branes are characterized by charges in the torsion subgroup of K-theory and their only long range fields are gravitational and scalar. The field equations do not have large radius near horizon AdS solutions. Instead the horizons are Schwarzschild black branes. This leads us to conjecture that for $d \leq 11$ the K theory charges are bounded by a small integer, and there can be no large gravitational back reaction in the near horizon limit, for stable configurations. Unbounded values of these discrete charges would violate the Covariant Entropy Bound. We discuss a counterexample to the conjecture in $AdS_3$. We find similar counterexamples in higher dimensional AdS spaces, but argue that none of them lead to SUSY violating models of quantum gravity in Minkowski space.
We study the constraints on HST models of AdS space-time. The causal diamonds of HST along time-like geodesics of AdS space-time, fit nicely into the FRW patch of AdS space. The coordinate singularity of the FRW patch is identified with the proper time at which the Hilbert space of the causal diamond becomes infinite dimensional. For diamonds much smaller than the AdS radius, RAdS, the time dependent Hamiltonians of HST are the same as those used to describe similar diamonds in Minkowski space. In particular, they are invariant under the fuzzy analog of volume preserving diffeomorphisms of the holographic screen, which leads to fast scrambling of perturbations on the horizon of a black hole of size smaller than RAdS. We argue that, in order to take a limit of this system which converges to a CFT, one must choose Hamiltonians, in a range of proper times of order RAdS, which break this invariance, and become local in a particular choice of basis for the variables. We show that, beginning with flat, sub-RAdS, patches of dimension D, the resulting CFT, constructed from the variables of HST, is inconsistent with the entropy of large black holes, unless one has at least two compact dimensions, whose size is of order RAdS. The argument is connected to a new observation about the scrambling rate of information localized on the compact dimensions. Our construction explains why large AdS black holes do not have the fast scrambling property. Our present approach cannot deal with models where string theory is weakly coupled and RAdS is of order the string scale, because the relationship between area and entropy is non-universal in such models. On spatial length scales longer than RAdS, our mapping of HST variables into CFT shares much with the Tensor Network Renormalization Group (TNRG)[1] and is a sort of evolving error correcting code[2].
I argue that scattering theory for massless particles in Minkowski space should be reformulated as a mapping between past and future representations of an algebra of densities on the conformal boundary. These densities are best thought of as living on the momentum space light cone dual to null infinity, which describes the simultaneous eigenstates of the BMS generators. The currents describe the flow of other quantum numbers through the holographic screen at infinity. They are operator valued measures on the momentum light cone, with non-zero support at $P = 0$, which is necessary to describe finite flows of total momentum, with zero energy-momentum density, on the asymptotic holographic screen. Jet states, the closest approximation to the conventional notion of asymptotic particle state, have finite momentum flowing out through spherical caps of finite opening angle, with the zero momentum currents vanishing in annuli surrounding these caps. Although these notions are valid both in field theory and quantum gravity, I'll argue that they form the basis for understanding the holographic/covariant entropy principle in the latter framework, where the densities form a complete set of operators. The variables on a finite area holographic screen are restrictions of those at infinity. The restriction is implemented by a cutoff on the Euclidean Dirac spectrum on the screen, which is a generalized UV/IR correspondence.
In a recent paper[1] Kundu and one of the present authors showed that there were transient but observable CP violating effects in the decay of classical currents on the horizon of a black hole, if the Lagrangian of the Maxwell field contained a CP violating angle θ. In this paper we demonstrate that a similar effect can be seen in the quantum mechanics of QED: a non-trivial Berry phase in the QED wave function is produced by in-falling electric charges. We also investigate whether CP violation, of this or any other type, might be used to produce the baryon asymmetry of the universe, in models where primordial black hole decay contributes to the matter content of the present universe. This can happen both in a variety of hybrid inflation models, and in the Holographic Space-time (HST) model of inflation[2].
This is a completely rewritten version of the talk I gave at the Philosophy of Cosmology conference in Tenerife, September 2014, which incorporates elements of my IFT Madrid Anthropics Conference talk. The original was too technical. The current version uses intuitive notions from black hole physics to explain the model of inflationary cosmology based on the Holographic Space Time formalism. The reason that the initial state of the universe had low entropy is that more generic states have no localized excitations, since in HST, localized excitations are defined by constraints on the fundamental variables. The only way to obtain a radiation dominated era, is for each time-like geodesic to see an almost uniform gas of small black holes as its horizon expands, such that the holes evaporate into radiation before they collide and coalesce. Comparing the time slicing that follows causal diamonds along a trajectory, with the global FRW slicing, one sees that systems outside the horizon had to undergo inflation, with a number of e-folds fixed by the present and inflationary cosmological constants, and the black hole number density on FRW slices just after inflation ends. These parameters also determine the size of scalar and tensor metric perturbations and the reheat temperature of the universe. I sketch a class of explicit finite quantum mechanical models of cosmology, which have these properties. Physicists interested in the details of those models should consult a recent paper\cite{holoinflation3}.
This paper is a major revision of our previous work on the HST model of inflation. We identify the local fluctuations of the metric with fluctuations of the mass and angular momentum of black holes, and show that the consistency conditions in HST for a single trajectory to see more and more of a homogeneous distribution of black holes, imply that the system outside the horizon is undergoing inflation: small systems of equal entropy, are not in causal contact. Homogeneity then requires that the initial trajectory underwent inflation that expanded the black hole radius into our current horizon. The low entropy of the initial state of the universe is explained by the fact that this is the maximal entropy state, which has long lived localized excitations, and which can form structures more complex than black holes. The number of e-folds, reheat temperature of the universe and size of inflationary fluctuations are calculated in terms of a few parameters.
We discuss the implications for gamma ray burst studies, of a dark unbroken $U(1)_D$ sector that couples predominantly through gravity to the visible sector. The dominant dark matter component remains neutral under $U(1)_D$. The collapsar model is assumed to explain the origin of long gamma ray bursts. The main idea is that by measuring the change in stellar black hole spin during the duration of the GRB, one can make inferences about the existence of a dark matter accretion disk. This could potentially provide evidence for the existence for a $U(1)_D$ sector.
We revisit our investigation of the claim of [1] that old black holes contain a firewall, i.e. an in-falling observer encounters highly excited states at a time much shorter than the light crossing time of the Schwarzschild radius. We used the formalism of Holographic Space-time (HST) where there is no dramatic change in particle physics inside the horizon until a time of order the Schwarzschild radius. We correct our description of the interior of the black hole . HST provides a complete description of the quantum mechanics along any time-like trajectory, even those which fall through the black hole horizon. The latter are described as alternative factorizations of the description of an external observer, turning the mirage of the interior provided by that observer's membrane paradigm on the stretched horizon, into reality.
We derive Newton's Law from the formalism of Holographic Space-Time (HST). More precisely, we show that for a large class of Hamiltonians of the type proposed previously for the HST description of a geodesic in Minkowski space, the eikonal for scattering of two massless particles at large impact parameter scales as expected with the impact parameter and the energies of the particles in the center of mass (CM) frame. We also discuss the criteria for black hole production in this collision, and find an estimate, purely within the HST framework, for the impact parameter at which it sets in, which coincides with the estimate based on general relativity.
Following the Membrane Paradigm, we show that the stretched horizon of a black hole retains information about particles thrown into the hole for a time of order the scrambling time m ln(m/M_P), after the particles cross the horizon. One can, for example, read off the proper time at which a particle anti-particle pair thrown into the hole, annihilates behind the horizon, if this time is less than the scrambling time. If we believe that the Schwarzschild geometry exterior to the horizon is a robust thermodynamic feature of the quantum black hole, independent of whether it is newly formed, or has undergone a long period of Hawking decay, then this classical computation shows that the "firewall" resolution of the AMPS paradox is not valid.
We propose the use of two point Pade approximants to find expressions valid uniformly in coupling constant for theories with both weak and strong coupling expansions. In particular, one can use these approximants in models with a strong/weak duality, when the symmetries do not determine exact expressions for some quantity.
We continue the study of inflationary fluctuations in Holographic Space Time models of inflation. We argue that the holographic theory of inflation provides a physical context for what is often called dS/CFT. The holographic theory is a quantum theory which, in the limit of a large number of e-foldings, gives rise to a field theory on $S^3$, which is the representation space for a unitary representation of SO(1,4). This is not a conventional CFT, and we do not know the detailed non-perturbative axioms for correlation functions. However, the two- and three-point functions are completely determined by symmetry, and coincide up to a few constants (really functions of the background FRW geometry) with those calculated in a single field slow-roll inflation model. The only significant deviation from slow roll is in the tensor fluctuations. We predict zero tensor tilt and roughly equal weight for all three conformally invariant tensor 3-point functions (unless parity is imposed as a symmetry). We discuss the relation between our results and those of Maldacena, McFadden, Skenderis, and others. Current data can be explained in terms of symmetries and a few general principles, and is consistent with a large class of models, including HST.