Letting Go of Spacetime

Letting Go of Spacetime

• 1.
  Letting Go ofSpacetime: Lessons for Quantum Foundations from Quantum Gravity Sean Carroll Caltech & Santa Fe Institute Radcliffe Institute Workshop: The Bridge between Quantum Theory and Reality January 2021
• 2.
  Senses of Locality Measurementlocality: measurement outcomes are independent of events outside the light cone. Ontological locality – Dynamical locality: [no] [unclear] [probably not] [probably not even that] Strong form: local beables. Weak form:
• 3.
  Causality in QFT:operators commute at spacelike separation, What is that supposed to mean when we sum over spacetime metrics? x t Path integral: Without a single classical metric, distances and times are only approximate notions (at best). Locality is tricky in quantum gravity
• 4.
  The Holographic Principle: degreesof freedom aren’t distributed locally in space Von Neumann entropy: Counting degrees of freedom: QFT: of a region is infinite, and scales like volume. QG: is finite, and scales like area ( ). Holographic principle: we can think of quantum information as “living on” the boundary of a region.
• 5.
  Horizon Complementarity: degrees offreedom don’t even have an objective “location” infalling observer: local quantum field theory external observer: degrees of freedom spread holographically across horizon Thus: there’s no such thing as “where the information is.” Motivation: reconciling unitary evolution with empirical success of local QFT.
• 6.
  Field theory/Gravity duality: “space”isn’t uniquely defined Quantum theory Classical theory 1 Classical theory 2 Duality: two classical theories with the same “quantization.” AdS/CFT: duality between an N-dimensional field theory and an (N+1)-dimensional theory with gravity. Local operators on one side are non-local on the other.
• 7.
  Wormholes? The black-hole information puzzlehas led to a resurgence of interest in wormholes, in two different contexts: • Real but microscopic wormholes relating entangled particles inside & outside the BH (ER=EPR). • Imaginary “Euclidean” wormholes used in the gravitational path integral to calculate properties of Hawking radiation. A modern version of “quantum foam.” [Quanta]
• 8.
  Don’t build ontologiesrelying on a unique, well-defined concept of “spacetime.” Do think about why spacetime and locality are such approximately-good ideas. Do think about how to develop vague ideas from physics (holography, complementarity, wormholes) into sharper, more well-defined concepts. Potential lessons