A geometric view on the Wilsonian renormalization group

by Mukund Rangamani (Durham)

Tuesday 15 Mar 2011, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Zurich

TH Theory Conference Room (CERN)

I will discuss a holographic perspective of Wilsonian renormalization group flow. Starting with field theories (which admit a holographic gravity dual) defined on a cut-off surface in a bulk spacetime, I will argue that integrating out high energy modes in the field theory should correspond to integrating out a part of the bulk geometry. In particular, I shall describe how to carry out this procedure in practice in the classical gravity approximation using examples of scalar and vector fields. By integrating out bulk degrees of freedom all the way to a black hole horizon, this formulation defines a refined version of the black hole membrane paradigm. Furthermore, it also provides a derivation of the semi-holographic description of low energy physics.