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School of Physical and Chemical Sciences

Holographic Approaches

Leveraging a boundary perspective on black holes and gravitational radiation. 

In a seminal 1997 paper, Juan Maldacena provided the first very concrete examples of an equivalence between certain non-gravitational quantum systems, known as Conformal Field Theories (CFTs) and higher-dimensional gravitational theories in asymptotically Anti de Sitter (AdS) spaces. This discovery has opened the avenue for several developments linking apparently very different areas of theoretical physics, from insights on the black hole information paradox to the study of strongly coupled matter relevant for instance for describing neutron stars. By now, holography and CFT techniques in general represent one of the standard tools theorists use for analyzing the intriguing properties of black holes that provide a first window on the questions around the nature of quantum gravity. For this purpose it is often useful to start from idealised situations in various spacetime dimensions, possibly in presence of supersymmetry, where one can use an explicit analytic approach. The general lessons emerging from this analysis are expected to have a very general validity and provide a reliable theoretical framework where theorists can address the challenge to identify the allowed and interesting modification of General Relativity.

A microstate mimicking an extremal AdS black hole

[Credit: I. Bena, S Giusto, E. J. Martinec, R. Russo,M. Shigemori, D. Turton, and N. P. Warner, 1607.03908]

The new generation of Gravitational Wave detectors promises a wealth of new data probing black holes and General Relativity in extreme situations. This will certainly present new challenges in our understanding of black holes: one of the key aims of our collaboration in this area is provide concrete links between the latest theoretical developments and the new data-driven questions.

 

Key questions

  • Use the properties of heavy states in the CFT description to learn about black hole microstates and their dynamical properties (such as Love numbers etc.)
  • Use CFT correlators to study the gravitational binaries in AdS including their gravitational radiation
  • Extend the holographic approach beyond the case of AdS spaces
  • Under what conditions can we prove a correspondence between vacuum asymptotically AdS spacetimes and their data on the conformal boundary?
  • Can we devise theoretical and numerical methods to reconstruct or approximate the bulk spacetime from given boundary data, or to achieve particular behaviours on the bulk spacetime?

 

Relevant Members

GWI members working on holographic approaches include:

  • Tarek Anous
  • Pau Figueras
  • Francesco Galvagno
  • Alessandro Georgoudis
  • Josh Gowdy
  • Lorenzo Rossi
  • Rodolfo Russo
  • Arick Shao
  • Congkao Wen

(See Our Members for contact links)

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