We present a holographic duality for the de Sitter static patch which
consolidates basic features of its geometry and the behavior of gravity and
brane probes, valid on timescales short compared to the decay or Poincare
recurrence times. Namely de Sitter spacetime dSd(R) in d dimensions with
curvature radius R is holographically dual to two conformal field theories on
dSd−1(R), cut off at an energy scale 1/R where they couple to each other
and to d−1 dimensional gravity. As part of our analysis, we study brane
probes in de Sitter and thermal Anti de Sitter spaces, and interpret the terms
in the corresponding DBI action via strongly coupled thermal field theory. This
provides a dual field theoretic interpretation of the fact that probes take
forever to reach a horizon in general relativity.Comment: 29 pages, harvmac big; 3 figures; v2: references added, minor typo
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