Jordan Cotler - "Euclidean Wormholes and Random CFT"

Tuesday 22 Sept 2020, 16:00 → 18:00 Europe/Zurich

Zoom Only (CERN)

Zoom virtual seminar: Click here to enter room

Abstract: We will nonperturbatively compute the path integral of 3D gravity with negative cosmological constant on spaces which are topologically a torus times an interval. These are Euclidean wormholes, which smoothly interpolate between two asymptotically Euclidean AdS3 regions with torus boundary.  The resulting amplitude encodes spectral correlations between BTZ black hole microstates near threshold.  The low-energy limit of these correlations is precisely that of a double-scaled random matrix ensemble with Virasoro symmetry. These findings suggest that if pure 3D gravity has a holographic dual, then the dual is an ensemble which generalizes random matrix theory.  We will also show that there are analogs of these 3D wormholes in higher dimensions and discuss their stability in pure Einstein gravity as well as string theory.