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arXiv:2406.10879 · Journal of High Energy Physics

Stretched horizon from conformal field theory

Suchetan Das

Published Nov 6, 2024• 7 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

A bstract Recently, it has been observed that the Hartle-Hawking correlators, a signature of smooth horizon, can emerge from certain heavy excited state correlators in the (manifestly non-smooth) BTZ stretched horizon background, in the limit when the stretched horizon approaches the real horizon. In this note, we develop a framework of quantizing the CFT modular Hamiltonian, that explains the necessity of introducing a stretched horizon and the emergence of thermal features in the AdS-Rindler and (planar) BTZ backgrounds. In more detail, we quantize vacuum modular Hamiltonian on a spatial segment of S 1 , which can be written as a particular linear combination of sl(2,ℝ) generators. Unlike radial quantization, (Euclidean) time circles emerge naturally here which can be contracted smoothly to the ‘fixed points’(end points of the interval) of this quantization thus providing a direct link to thermal physics. To define a Hilbert space with discrete normalizable states and to construct a Virasoro algebra with finite central extension, a natural regulator ( ϵ ) is needed around the fixed points. Eventually, in the dual description the fixed points correspond to the horizons of AdS-Rindler patch or (planar) BTZ and the cut-off being the stretched horizon. We construct a (Lorentzian) highest weight representation of that Virasoro algebra where vacuum can be identified with certain boundary states on the cut-off surface. We further demonstrate that two point function in a (vacuum) descendant state of the regulated Hilbert space will reproduce thermal answer in ϵ → 0 limit which is analogous to the recent observation of emergent thermality in (planar) BTZ stretched horizon background. We also argue the thermal entropy of this quantization coincides with entanglement entropy of the subregion. Conversely, the microcanonical entropy corresponding to high energy density of states exactly reproduce the BTZ entropy. Quite remarkably, all these dominant high lying microstates are defined only at finite ϵ in the regulated Hilbert space. We expect that all our observations can be generalized to BTZ in stretched horizon background where the boundary spatial coordinate is compactified.

DOI
10.1007/jhep11(2024)033

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A bstract Recently, it has been observed that the Hartle-Hawking correlators, a signature of smooth horizon, can emerge from certain heavy excited state correlators in the (manifestly non-smooth) BTZ stretched horizon background, in the limit when the stretched horizon approaches the real horizon. In this note, we develop a framework of quantizing the CFT modular Hamiltonian, that explains the necessity of introducing a stretched horizon and the emergence of thermal features in the AdS-Rindler and (planar) BTZ backgrounds. In more detail, we quantize vacuum modular Hamiltonian on a spatial segment of S 1 , which can be written as a particular linear combination of sl(2,ℝ) generators. Unlike radial quantization, (Euclidean) time circles emerge naturally here which can be contracted smoothly to the ‘fixed points’(end points of the interval) of this quantization thus providing a direct link to thermal physics. To define a Hilbert space with discrete normalizable states and to construct a Virasoro algebra with finite central extension, a natural regulator ( ϵ ) is needed around the fixed points. Eventually, in the dual description the fixed points correspond to the horizons of AdS-Rindler patch or (planar) BTZ and the cut-off being the stretched horizon. We construct a (Lorentzian) highest weight representation of that Virasoro algebra where vacuum can be identified with certain boundary states on the cut-off surface. We further demonstrate that two point function in a (vacuum) descendant state of the regulated Hilbert space will reproduce thermal answer in ϵ → 0 limit which is analogous to the recent observation of emergent thermality in (planar) BTZ stretched horizon background. We also argue the thermal entropy of this quantization coincides with entanglement entropy of the subregion. Conversely, the microcanonical entropy corresponding to high energy density of states exactly reproduce the BTZ entropy. Quite remarkably, all these dominant high lying microstates are defined only at finite ϵ in the regulated Hilbert space. We expect that all our observations can be generalized to BTZ in stretched horizon background where the boundary spatial coordinate is compactified.
In this article, we explore the connection between the heating phase of periodically driven CFTs and the Modular Hamiltonian of a subregion in the vacuum state. We show that the heating phase Hamiltonian corresponds to the Modular Hamiltonian, with the fixed points mapping to the endpoints of the subregion. In the bulk dual, we find that these fixed points correspond to the Ryu-Takayanagi surface of the AdS-Rindler wedge. Consequently, the entanglement entropy associated to the boundary interval within two fixed points exactly matches with the Rindler entropy of AdS-Rindler. We observe the emergent Virasoro algebra in the boundary quantization of the Modular Hamiltonian has a striking similarity with the emergent near Horizon Virasoro algebra. This is a consequence of the fact that while obtaining the boundary Virasoro algebra, a cut-off with conformal boundary condition around the fixed point is introduced, which in the bulk is related to a stretched horizon, with an emergent two-dimensional conformal symmetry. We also argue that as one tunes the parameter space of Floquet Hamiltonians to transition from the non-heating to the heating phase the operator algebra type changes from Von Neumann type III to III1III_1III1​ factor, providing a non-equilibrium analogue of the Hawking-Page transition.
In arXiv:2312.14108, we argued that a sliver at the black hole mass in the Hilbert space of a quantum field theory on an AdS black hole with a stretched horizon, has many desirable features of black hole microstates. A key observation is that the stretched horizon requires a finite Planck length, i.e., finite-NNN. Therefore it is best viewed as a ``quantum horizon" -- a proxy for the UV-complete bulk description, and not directly an element in the bulk EFT. It was shown in arXiv:2312.14108 that despite the manifest absence of the interior, the 2-point function in the sliver is indistinguishable from the smooth horizon correlator, up to the Page time. In this paper, instead of boundary correlators, we work directly in the bulk, and demonstrate the appearance of the bulk Hartle-Hawking correlator in the large-NNN limit. This is instructive because it shows that the analytic continuation across the horizon is emergent. It is a bulkbulkbulk transition to a Type III algebra and provides a structural distinction between black holes and weakly coupled thermal systems. We also identify a mechanism for universal code subspaces and interior tensor factors to appear via a quantum horizon version of thermal factorization. Our claims apply directly only within a ``Page window", so they are not in immediate tension with firewall arguments. During a Page window, typical heavy microstates probed by light single trace operators respond with effectively smooth horizons in low-point correlators. We work in 2+1 dimensions to be concrete, but expect our results to hold in all higher dimensions. We discuss some important differences between our approach and the conventional fuzzball program, and also argue that probe-notions (like infalling boundary conditions) must be distinguished from microstate-notions (like size of the Einstein-Rosen bridge) to make meaningful statements about post-Page smoothness.
A bstract The corrections to holographic entanglement entropy from bulk quantum fields in a classical gravitational background are now well understood. They lead, in particular, to unitary Page curves for evaporating black holes. However, the correct treatment of quantum fluctuations of the metric, including graviton excitations, is a longstanding problem. We provide a gauge-invariant prescription for the generalized entropy of gravitons in anti-de Sitter space in terms of areas and bulk entanglement entropy, generalizing the quantum extremal surface prescription to accommodate fluctuations in the semiclassical spacetime geometry. This task requires a careful treatment of the area operator on the graviton Hilbert space and the definition of a “quantum extremal gauge” in which the extremal surface is unperturbed. It also requires us to determine the correct vacuum modular Hamiltonian for the graviton field, which we fix by requiring that it doesn’t contain a boundary term in extremal gauge. We check our prescription with an explicit computation of the vacuum-subtracted generalized entropy of states containing a graviton in an AdS-Rindler background. Our results exactly match vacuum-subtracted von Neumann entropies for stress-tensor excited states in holographic conformal field theory with d > 2 dimensions. We also use covariant phase space techniques to give a partial proof of our prescription when the entanglement wedge for the background spacetime has a bifurcate Killing horizon. Along the way, we identify a class of perturbative graviton states that have parametrically larger generalized entropy, in the small G N expansion, than any low-energy excitations of an ordinary quantum field.
A bstract In this work, we consider the atypical non-equilibrium state found in [1708.06328] which holographically represents a behind-the-horizon excitation in a black hole spacetime. The special feature of this state is that it looks like an equilibrium state when probed by a class of low-energy operators. First, we retrieve this property using the uniformization mapping in the limit of a large central charge, in the process we are able to derive rather than presume approximate thermal physics. Furthermore, in the large- c and high-energy limit, we realize these excitations as elements of the commutant algebra of a GNS-representation of the light operator algebra. Instead of analytically continuing a mixed heavy-light Euclidean correlator to a Lorentzian correlator, we identify the Euclidean correlator as a GNS-linear form and interpret the Lorentzian correlator as a vacuum expectation value of representatives of the light operator algebra on the GNS-vacuum.
The relationship between Bekenstein-Hawking and entanglement entropy is one \nof the most intriguing problems of black hole and theoretical physics. Although both entropies have the same geometric characterization (they scale as an area), they have a different origin. The Bekenstein-Hawking entropy has it’s roots in the thermal correlations whereas the entanglement entropy describes the quantum correlations. In this thesis we address this problem from a holographic \nperspective, making large use of the AdS/CFT correspondence. \nWe first look at the BTZ black hole in which case the black hole horizon and \nthe conical singularity are related to each other. Using the modular transformations of the dual 2D CFT, we first obtain an expression of the holographicentanglement entropy for the Euclidean BTZ black hole, AdS3 vacua and conical singularity and then analyse the behaviour of the leading terms in the expansions of the holographic entanglement entropy for the BTZ black hole and the \nconical singularity. From these calculations, we have extracted the “signatures” through which entanglement entropy differentiates between the horizon and the conical singularity. When we deal with CFT at a finite temperature then it is well known that, entanglement entropy fails as a measure and hence it is replaced by entanglement negativity which is able to separate the thermal/classical \ncorrelations from the quantum correlations thereby capturing “distillable” entanglement. We address the problem of finding a suitable holographic prescription \nto calculate the entanglement negativity for two adjacent intervals when the CFT is at a finite temperature and in turn dual to a black hole in the bulk. We first propose a conjecture for the holographic entanglement negativity for two adjacent intervals in the \nAdS3/CFT2 setup and perform calculations in the \nvarious cases to support this conjecture. We further push forward the validity of this conjecture by calculating the holographic entanglement negativity for two \nadjacent subsystems when we have RN-AdS black holes in the bulk which in \nturn are dual to CFT with a conserved charge.
We consider the entanglement entropy in 2d conformal field theory in a class of excited states produced by the insertion of a heavy local operator. These include both high-energy eigenstates of the Hamiltonian and time-dependent local quenches. We compute the universal contribution from the stress tensor to the single interval Renyi entropies and entanglement entropy, and conjecture that this dominates the answer in theories with a large central charge and a sparse spectrum of low-dimension operators. The resulting entanglement entropies agree precisely with holographic calculations in three-dimensional gravity. High-energy eigenstates are dual to microstates of the BTZ black hole, so the corresponding holographic calculation is a geodesic length in the black hole geometry; agreement between these two answers demonstrates that these individual microstates of holographic CFTs effectively thermalize at the level of the single-interval entanglement entropy. For local quenches, the dual geometry is a highly boosted black hole or conical defect. On the CFT side, the rise in entanglement entropy after a quench is directly related to the monodromy of a Virasoro conformal block.