Quantum Gravity in the Lab. II. Teleportation by Size and Traversable Wormholes
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Talk presented Sept 4, 2023 at the Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Seminar on Simulations of Quantum Field Theories, Oberwolz, Austria. Slides contain information previously published in Nature 612, pages 51–55 (2022), and arXiv:2303.15423
We observe that the comment of [1, arXiv:2302.07897] is consistent with [2] on key points: i) the microscopic mechanism of the experimentally observed teleportation is size winding and ii) the system thermalizes and scrambles at the time of teleportation. These properties are consistent with a gravitational interpretation of the teleportation dynamics, as opposed to the late-time dynamics. The objections of [1] concern counterfactual scenarios outside of the experimentally implemented protocol.
We reconsider the role of wormholes in the AdS/CFT correspondence. We focus on Euclidean wormholes that connect two asymptotically AdS or hyperbolic regions with $\mathbb{S}$ 1 × $\mathbb{S}$ d-1 boundary. There is no solution to Einstein’s equations of this sort, as the wormholes possess a modulus that runs to infinity. To find on-shell wormholes we must stabilize this modulus, which we can do by fixing the total energy on the two boundaries. Such a wormhole gives the saddle point approximation to a non-standard problem in quantum gravity, where we fix two asymptotic boundaries and constrain the common energy. Crucially the dual quantity does not factorize even when the bulk is dual to a single CFT, on account of the fixed energy constraint. From this quantity we extract a smeared version of the microcanonical spectral form factor. For a chaotic theory this quantity is self-averaging, i.e. well-approximated by averaging over energy windows, or over coupling constants. We go on to give a precision test involving the microcanonical spectral form factor where the two replicas have slightly different coupling constants. In chaotic theories this form factor is known to smoothly decay at a rate universally predicted in terms of one replica physics, provided that there is an average either over a window or over couplings. We compute the expected decay rate for holographic theories, and the form factor from a wormhole, and the two exactly agree for a wide range of two-derivative effective field theories in AdS. This gives a precision test of averaging in AdS/CFT. Our results interpret a number of confusing facts about wormholes and factorization in AdS and suggest that we should regard gravitational effective field theory as a mesoscopic description, analogous to semiclassical mesoscopic descriptions of quantum chaotic systems.
Abstract We study two disjoint universes in an entangled pure state. When only one universe contains gravity, the path integral for the n th Rényi entropy includes a wormhole between the n copies of the gravitating universe, leading to a standard ‘island formula’ for entanglement entropy consistent with unitarity of quantum information. When both universes contain gravity, gravitational corrections to this configuration lead to a violation of unitarity. However, the path integral is now dominated by a novel wormhole with 2 n boundaries connecting replica copies of both universes. The analytic continuation of this contribution involves a quotient by Z n replica symmetry, giving a cylinder connecting the two universes. When entanglement is large, this configuration has an effective description as a ‘swap wormhole’, a geometry in which the boundaries of the two universes are glued together by a ‘swaperator’. This description allows precise computation of a generalized entropy-like formula for entanglement entropy. The quantum extremal surface computing the entropy lives on the Lorentzian continuation of the cylinder/swap wormhole, which has a connected Cauchy slice stretching between the universes—a realization of the ER = EPR idea. The new wormhole restores unitarity of quantum information.
We consider a version of the typical state firewall setup recently reintroduced by Stanford and Yang, who found that wormholes may create firewalls. We examine a late-time scaling limit in JT gravity in which one can resum the expansion in the number of wormholes, and we use this to study the exact distribution of interior slices at times exponential in the entropy. We consider a thermofield double with and without early perturbations on a boundary. These perturbations can appear on interior slices as dangerous high energy shockwaves. For exponentially late times, wormholes tend to teleport the particles created by perturbations and render the interior more dangerous. In states with many perturbations separated by large times, the probability of a safe interior is exponentially small, even though these would be safe without wormholes. With perturbation, even in the safest state we conceive, the odds of encountering a shock are fifty-fifty. One interpretation of the phenomenon is that wormholes can change time-ordered contours into effective out-of-time-ordered folds, making shockwaves appear in unexpected places.
In this paper, we demonstrate that wormholes must be entangled regardless of asymptotic boundary conditions. By assuming black hole complementarity, we argue that traversable wormholes instantiate entanglement-assisted quantum channels and that this entanglement must be present between the stretched horizons as an initial condition prior to traversability. In conclusion, this result demonstrates the forward direction of the ER/EPR conjectures.
We prove a positive volume theorem for asymptotically AdS spacetimes: the maximal volume slice has nonnegative vacuum-subtracted volume, and the vacuum-subtracted volume vanishes if and only if the spacetime is identically pure AdS. Under the Complexity=Volume proposal, this constitutes a positive holographic complexity theorem. The result features a number of parallels with the positive energy theorem, including the assumption of an energy condition that excludes false vacuum decay (the AdS weak energy condition). Our proof is rigorously established in broad generality in four bulk dimensions, and we provide strong evidence in favor of a generalization to arbitrary dimensions. Our techniques also yield a holographic proof of Lloyd’s bound for a class of bulk spacetimes. We further establish a partial rigidity result for wormholes: wormholes with a given throat size are more complex than AdS-Schwarzschild with the same throat size.
We consider black holes in 2d de Sitter JT gravity coupled to a CFT, and entangled with matter in a disjoint non-gravitating universe. Tracing out the entangling matter leaves the CFT in a density matrix whose stress tensor backreacts on the de Sitter geometry, lengthening the wormhole behind the black hole horizon. Naively, the entropy of the entangling matter increases without bound as the strength of the entanglement increases, but the monogamy property predicts that this growth must level off. We compute the entropy via the replica trick, including wormholes between the replica copies of the de Sitter geometry, and find a competition between conventional field theory entanglement entropy and the surface area of extremal “islands” in the de Sitter geometry. The black hole and cosmological horizons both play a role in generating such islands in the backreacted geometry, and have the effect of stabilizing the entropy growth as required by monogamy. We first show this in a scenario in which the de Sitter spatial section has been decompactified to an interval. Then we consider the compact geometry, and argue for a novel interpretation of the island formula in the context of closed universes that recovers the Page curve. Finally, we comment on the application of our construction to the cosmological horizon in empty de Sitter space.
The principle of maximum ignorance posits that the coarse-grained description of a system is maximally agnostic about its underlying microscopic structure. We briefly review this principle for random matrix theory and for the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. We then apply this principle in holography to construct ensembles of random mixed states. This leads to an ensemble of microstates which models our microscopic ignorance, and which on average reproduces the effective semiclassical physics of a given bulk state. We call this ensemble the state-averaging ansatz. The output of our model is a prediction for semiclassical contributions to variances and higher statistical moments over the ensemble of microstates. The statistical moments provide coarse-grained — yet gravitationally non-perturbative — information about the microstructure of the individual states of the ensemble. We show that these contributions exactly match the on-shell action of known wormhole configurations of the gravitational path integral. These results strengthen the view that wormholes simply parametrize the ignorance of the microstructure of a fundamental state, given a fixed semiclassical bulk description.
Multiple lines of evidence suggest that the Hilbert space of an isolated de Sitter universe is one dimensional but can appear larger when probed by a gravitating observer. To test this idea, we compute the von Neumann entropy of a field theory in a two-dimensional de Sitter universe which is entangled in a thermal-like state with the same field theory on a disjoint, asymptotically anti-de Sitter (AdS) black hole. Previously, it was shown that the replica trick for computing the entropy of such entangled gravitating systems requires the inclusion of a non-perturbative effect in quantum gravity — novel wormholes connecting the two spaces. Here we show that: (a) the expected wormholes connecting de Sitter and AdS universes exist, avoiding a no-go theorem via the presence of sources on the AdS boundary; (b) the entanglement entropy vanishes if the nominal entropy of the de Sitter cosmological horizon (S ds = $A^{dS}_{horizon}$/4G N ) is less than the entropy of the AdS black hole horizon (S BH = $A^{AdS}_{horizon}$/4G N ), i.e., S dS < S BH ; (c) the entanglement entropy is finite when S dS > S BH . Thus, the de Sitter Hilbert space is effectively nontrivial only when S dS > S BH . The AdS black hole we introduce can be regarded as an “observer” for de Sitter space. In this sense, our result is a non-perturbative generalization of the recent perturbative argument that the algebra of observables on the de Sitter static patch becomes nontrivial in the presence of an observer.
We construct a Type II ∞ von Neumann algebra that describes the large N physics of single-trace operators in AdS/CFT in the microcanonical ensemble, where there is no need to include perturbative 1/N corrections. Using only the extrapolate dictionary, we show that the entropy of semiclassical states on this algebra is holographically dual to the generalized entropy of the black hole bifurcation surface. From a boundary perspective, this constitutes a derivation of a special case of the QES prescription without any use of Euclidean gravity or replicas; from a purely bulk perspective, it is a derivation of the quantum-corrected Bekenstein-Hawking formula as the entropy of an explicit algebra in the G → 0 limit of Lorentzian effective field theory quantum gravity. In a limit where a black hole is first allowed to equilibrate and then is later potentially re-excited, we show that the generalized second law is a direct consequence of the monotonicity of the entropy of algebras under trace-preserving inclusions. Finally, by considering excitations that are separated by more than a scrambling time we construct a “free product” von Neumann algebra that describes the semiclassical physics of long wormholes supported by shocks. We compute Rényi entropies for this algebra and show that they are equal to a sum over saddles associated to quantum extremal surfaces in the wormhole. Surprisingly, however, the saddles associated to “bulge” quantum extremal surfaces contribute with a negative sign.
Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, which describes N randomly interacting Majorana fermions in 0+1 dimension, is found to be an solvable UV-complete toy model for holographic duality in nearly AdS 2 dilaton gravity. Ref. [1] proposed a modified model by coupling two identical SYK models, which at low-energy limit is dual to a global AdS 2 geometry. This geometry is an “eternal wormhole" because the two boundaries are causally connected. Increasing the temperature drives a Hawking-Page like transition from the eternal wormhole geometry to two disconnected black holes with coupled matter field. To gain more understanding of the coupled SYK model, in this work, we study the finite temperature spectral function of this system by numerical solving the Schwinger-Dyson equation in real-time. We find in the low-temperature phase the system is well described by weakly interacting fermions with renormalized single-particle gap, while in the high temperature phase the system is strongly interacting and the single-particle peaks merge. We also study the q dependence of the spectral function.
This work is the first step in a two-part investigation of real-time replica wormholes. Here we study the associated real-time gravitational path integral and construct the variational principle that will define its saddle-points. We also describe the general structure of the resulting real-time replica wormhole saddles, setting the stage for construction of explicit examples. These saddles necessarily involve complex metrics, and thus are accessed by deforming the original real contour of integration. However, the construction of these saddles need not rely on analytic continuation, and our formulation can be used even in the presence of non-analytic boundary-sources. Furthermore, at least for replica- and CPT-symmetric saddles we show that the metrics may be taken to be real in regions spacelike separated from a so-called ‘splitting surface’. This feature is an important hallmark of unitarity in a field theory dual.
We present an explicit reconstruction of the interior of an AdS2 black hole in Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity, that is entirely formulated in the dual SYK model and makes no direct reference to the gravitational bulk. We do this by introducing a probe “observer” in the right wormhole exterior and using the prescription of [arXiv:2009.04476] to transport SYK operators along the probe’s infalling worldline and into the black hole interior, using an appropriate SYK modular Hamiltonian. Our SYK computation recovers the precise proper time at which signals sent from the left boundary are registered by our observer’s apparatus inside the wormhole. The success of the computation relies on the universal properties of SYK and we outline a promising avenue for extending it to higher dimensions and applying it to the computation of scattering amplitudes behind the horizon.
We show that the vacuum-subtracted maximal volume, the proposed holographic dual to complexity of formation, can be negative when contributions from compact directions are included. We construct explicit solutions with arbitrarily negative complexity of formation in asymptotically AdS 4 × S 7 SUGRA. These examples rely critically on the compact directions, specifically the fact that the full eleven-dimensional spacetime is not asymptotically AdS 11 . While there is some ambiguity in the extension of the holographic complexity proposal to the compact directions, we show that the two natural candidates can both have arbitrarily negative complexity of formation in SUGRA solutions. We further find examples in which complexity can even decrease at late times, including cases of both single-sided geometries and two-sided wormholes. In particular, we construct a cosmological wormhole with simultaneously negative and decreasing complexity of formation (as computed by volume) at late times. We find a distinguished role for relevant primaries in these constructions and comment on possible interpretations.
In this paper, we propose a new gravity dual for a 2d BCFT with two conformal boundaries by introducing a defect that connects the two End-of-the-World branes. We demonstrate that the BCFT dual to this bulk model exhibits a richer lowest spectrum. The corresponding lowest energy eigenvalue can continuously interpolate between - πc 24 Δ x and 0 where Δ x is the distance between the boundaries. This range was inaccessible to the conventional AdS/BCFT model with distinct boundary conditions. We compute the holographic entanglement entropy and find that it exhibits three different phases, one of which breaks the time reflection symmetry. We also construct a wormhole saddle, analogous to a 3d replica wormhole, which connects different boundaries through the AdS bulk. This saddle is present only if the BCFT is non-unitary and is always subdominant compared to the disconnected saddle.