Date
Tue, 10 May 2022
Time
12:00 - 13:15
Location
Virtual
Speaker
Charlotte Sleight
Organisation
Univeristy of Durham

In the search for a complete description of quantum mechanical and
gravitational phenomena, we are inevitably led to consider observables on
boundaries at infinity. This is the common mantra that there are no local
observables in quantum gravity and gives rise to the tantalising possibility
of a purely boundary--or holographic--description of physics in the
interior. The AdS/CFT correspondence provides an important working example
of these ideas, where the boundary description of quantum gravity in anti-de
Sitter (AdS) space is an ordinary quantum mechanical system-- in particular,
a Lorentzian Conformal Field Theory (CFT)--where the rules of the game are
well understood. It would be desirable to have a similar level of
understanding for the universe we actually live in. In this talk I will
explain some recent efforts that aim to understand the rules of the game for
observables on the future boundary of de Sitter (dS) space. Unlike in AdS,
the boundaries of dS space are purely spatial with no standard notion of
locality and time. This obscures how the boundary observables capture a
consistent picture of unitary time evolution in the interior of dS space. I

will explain how, despite this difference, the structural similarities
between dS and AdS spaces allow to forge relations between boundary
correlators in these two space-times. These can be used to import
techniques, results and understanding from AdS to dS.

 

 

Please contact us with feedback and comments about this page. Last updated on 10 May 2022 09:27.