Modular discretization of the AdS2/CFT1 Holography

We propose a finite discretization for the black hole geometry and dynamics. We realize our proposal, in the case of extremal black holes, for which the radial and temporal near horizon geometry is known to be AdS$_2=SL(2,\mathbb{R})/SO(1,1,\mathbb{R})$. We implement its discretization by replacing the set of real numbers $\mathbb{R}$ with the set of integers modulo $N$, with AdS$_2$ going over to the finite geometry AdS$_2[N]=SL(2,\mathbb{Z}_N)/SO(1,1,\mathbb{Z}_N)$. We model the dynamics of the microscopic degrees of freedom by generalized Arnol'd cat maps, ${\sf A}\in SL(2,\mathbb{Z}_N)$, which are isometries of the geometry at both the classical and quantum levels. These exhibit well studied properties of strong arithmetic chaos, dynamical entropy, nonlocality and factorization in the cutoff discretization $N$, which are crucial for fast quantum information processing. We construct, finally, a new kind of unitary and holographic correspondence, for AdS$_2[N]$/CFT$_1[N]$, via coherent states of both the bulk and boundary geometries.Comment: 33 pages LaTeX2e, 1 JPEG figure. Typos corrected, references added. Clarification of several points in the abstract and the tex

Consistency Conditions for an AdS/MERA Correspondence

The Multi-scale Entanglement Renormalization Ansatz (MERA) is a tensor network that provides an efficient way of variationally estimating the ground state of a critical quantum system. The network geometry resembles a discretization of spatial slices of an AdS spacetime and "geodesics" in the MERA reproduce the Ryu-Takayanagi formula for the entanglement entropy of a boundary region in terms of bulk properties. It has therefore been suggested that there could be an AdS/MERA correspondence, relating states in the Hilbert space of the boundary quantum system to ones defined on the bulk lattice. Here we investigate this proposal and derive necessary conditions for it to apply, using geometric features and entropy inequalities that we expect to hold in the bulk. We show that, perhaps unsurprisingly, the MERA lattice can only describe physics on length scales larger than the AdS radius. Further, using the covariant entropy bound in the bulk, we show that there are no conventional MERA parameters that completely reproduce bulk physics even on super-AdS scales. We suggest modifications or generalizations of this kind of tensor network that may be able to provide a more robust correspondence.Comment: 38 pages, 9 figure

A variational principle in the parametric geometry of numbers, with applications to metric Diophantine approximation

We establish a new connection between metric Diophantine approximation and the parametric geometry of numbers by proving a variational principle facilitating the computation of the Hausdorff and packing dimensions of many sets of interest in Diophantine approximation. In particular, we show that the Hausdorff and packing dimensions of the set of singular $m\times n$ matrices are both equal to $mn \big(1-\frac1{m+n}\big)$, thus proving a conjecture of Kadyrov, Kleinbock, Lindenstrauss, and Margulis (preprint 2014) as well as answering a question of Bugeaud, Cheung, and Chevallier (preprint 2016). We introduce the notion of a $template$, which generalizes the notion of a $rigid$ $system$ (Roy, 2015) to the setting of matrix approximation. Our main theorem takes the following form: for any class of templates $\mathcal F$ closed under finite perturbations, the Hausdorff and packing dimensions of the set of matrices whose successive minima functions are members of $\mathcal F$ (up to finite perturbation) can be written as the suprema over $\mathcal F$ of certain natural functions on the space of templates. Besides implying KKLM's conjecture, this theorem has many other applications including computing the Hausdorff and packing dimensions of the set of points witnessing a conjecture of Starkov (2000), and of the set of points witnessing a conjecture of Schmidt (1983).Comment: Announcemen

Holographic Domains of Anti-de Sitter Space

An AdS_4 brane embedded in AdS_5 exhibits the novel feature that a four-dimensional graviton is localized near the brane, but the majority of the infinite bulk away from the brane where the warp factor diverges does not see four-dimensional gravity. A naive application of the holographic principle from the point of view of the four-dimensional observer would lead to a paradox; a global holographic mapping would require infinite entropy density. In this paper, we show that this paradox is resolved by the proper covariant formulation of the holographic principle. This is the first explicit example of a time-independent metric for which the spacelike formulation of the holographic principle is manifestly inadequate. Further confirmation of the correctness of this approach is that light-rays leaving the brane intersect at the location where we expect four-dimensional gravity to no longer dominate. We also present a simple method of locating CFT excitations dual to a particle in the bulk. We find that the holographic image on the brane moves off to infinity precisely when the particle exits the brane's holographic domain. Our analysis yields an improved understanding of the physics of the AdS_4/AdS_5 model.Comment: 29 pages, 6 figure

A candidate for a background independent formulation of M theory

A class of background independent membrane field theories are studied, and several properties are discovered which suggest that they may play a role in a background independent form of M theory. The bulk kinematics of these theories are described in terms of the conformal blocks of an algebra G on all oriented, finite genus, two-surfaces. The bulk dynamics is described in terms of causal histories in which time evolution is specified by giving amplitudes to certain local changes of the states. Holographic observables are defined which live in finite dimensional states spaces associated with boundaries in spacetime. We show here that the natural observables in these boundary state spaces are, when G is chosen to be Spin(D) or a supersymmetric extension of it, generalizations of matrix model coordinates in D dimensions. In certain cases the bulk dynamics can be chosen so the matrix model dynamics is recoverd for the boundary observables. The bosonic and supersymmetric cases in D=3 and D=9 are studied, and it is shown that the latter is, in a certain limit, related to the matrix model formulation of M theory. This correspondence gives rise to a conjecture concerning a background independent form of M theory in terms of which excitations of the background independent membrane field theory that correspond to strings and D0 branes are identified.Comment: Latex 46 pages, 21 figures, new results included which lead to a modification of the statement of the basic conjecture. Presentation improve

On the lattice structure of probability spaces in quantum mechanics

Let C be the set of all possible quantum states. We study the convex subsets of C with attention focused on the lattice theoretical structure of these convex subsets and, as a result, find a framework capable of unifying several aspects of quantum mechanics, including entanglement and Jaynes' Max-Ent principle. We also encounter links with entanglement witnesses, which leads to a new separability criteria expressed in lattice language. We also provide an extension of a separability criteria based on convex polytopes to the infinite dimensional case and show that it reveals interesting facets concerning the geometrical structure of the convex subsets. It is seen that the above mentioned framework is also capable of generalization to any statistical theory via the so-called convex operational models' approach. In particular, we show how to extend the geometrical structure underlying entanglement to any statistical model, an extension which may be useful for studying correlations in different generalizations of quantum mechanics.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1008.416