High Energy Theory Seminar

The Hawking-Page phase transition in holography is associated with the emergence of new symmetries and dynamical properties of correlators. Above the transition point: (1) Correlators cluster in time (Maldacena's information loss) (2) There exists a coarse-grained entropy that grows monotonically in time (Second law) (3) A large class of correlators decay exponentially (Quasi-normal modes) (4) There is an emergent approximate Lie group  (near-horizon symmetries).

I discuss the properties above from the point of view of the modular flow of the observable algebra of quantum gravity on the boundary. I prove that property (1) implies that the observable algebra is a type III_1 von Neumann factor. I point out that there is a class of quantum ergodic systems (K-systems) characterized by the existence of future and past subalgebras that satisfy all the four properties above. In other words, modular K-systems are maximally chaotic. I comment on the implications of the results above for the emergence of spacetime in holography, the generalizations of these results beyond modular flow, and the quantum ergodic hierarchy.

The talk is in 469 Lauritsen.

Contact theoryinfo@caltech.edu for Zoom information.