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We consider the thermal behavior of a large number of matrix degrees of freedom in the planar limit. We work in $0+1$ dimensions, with $D$ matrices, and use $1/D$ as an expansion parameter. This can be thought of as a non-commutative large-$D$ vector model, with two independent quartic couplings for the two different orderings of the matrices. We compute a thermal two-point correlator to ${\cal O}(1/D)$ and find that the degeneracy present at large $D$ is lifted, with energy levels split by an amount $\sim 1/\sqrt{D}$. This implies a timescale for thermal dissipation $\sim \sqrt{D}$. At high temperatures dissipation is predominantly due to one of the two quartic couplings., Comment: 32 pages. v2: added references. v3: additional discussion in the introduction and conclusions

We consider a braneworld scenario in which a flat 4-D brane, embedded in $M^{3,1} \times S^1$, is moving on or spiraling around the $S^1$. Although the induced metric on the brane is 4-D Minkowski, the would-be Lorentz symmetry of the brane is broken globally by the compactification. As recently pointed out this means causal bulk signals can propagate superluminally and even backwards in time according to brane observers. Here we consider the effective action on the brane induced by loops of bulk fields. We consider a variety of self-energy and vertex corrections due to bulk scalars and gravitons and show that bulk loops with non-zero winding generate UV-finite Lorentz-violating terms in the 4-D effective action. The results can be accommodated by the Standard Model Extension, a general framework for Lorentz-violating effective field theory., Comment: 29 pages. v2: fixed a minor typo

We propose to define multipartite entanglement of pure states as transformations acting on some parts of a system that can be undone by transformations acting on other parts. This leads to a definition of multipartite entanglement in terms of groups, namely certain quotients of the stabilizer group and its subgroups. We analyze properties of these entanglement groups and show that they lead to restrictions which give a precise meaning to monogamy of entanglement. We use these groups to propose a finite classification of entanglement types in multi-partite quantum systems and we show that this characterization of entanglement underlies several well-known quantum tasks., Comment: 36 pages

Brane observers executing appropriate motion through a partially compactified Lorentz invariant bulk spacetime, such as $M_4 \times S^1$, can send signals along the brane that are instantaneous or even travel backward in time. Nevertheless, causality in the braneworld remains intact. We establish these results, which follow from superluminal signal propagation reported in arXiv:2206.13590, through classical analysis and then extend our reasoning by examining quantum mechanical microcausality. One implication is the capacity for real time communication across arbitrarily large distances., Comment: 15 pages. v2: added reference, dependence of effective speed on angle. v3: fixed a minor typo

We consider a braneworld scenario in the simplest setting, $M_4 \times S^1$, with a 4D Minkowski metric induced on the brane, and establish the possibility of superluminal propagation. If the brane is at rest, the 4D Lorentz symmetry of the brane is exact, but if the brane is in motion, it is broken globally by the compactification. By measuring bulk fields, an observer on the brane sees a slice through a higher-dimensional field profile, which carries an imprint of the extra dimensions even when the brane is at rest. If the brane is in motion we find that bulk fields can propagate outside the brane lightcone by a parametrically large amount set by the brane velocity. We mention observational tests and possible applications to cosmology., Comment: 19 pages. v2: references added

We previously proposed that entanglement across a planar surface can be obtained from the partition function on a Euclidean hourglass geometry. Here we extend the prescription to spherical entangling surfaces in conformal field theory. We use the prescription to evaluate log terms in the entropy of a CFT in two dimensions, a conformally-coupled scalar in four dimensions, and a Maxwell field in four dimensions. For Maxwell we reproduce the extractable entropy obtained by Soni and Trivedi. We take this as evidence that the hourglass prescription provides a Euclidean technique for evaluating extractable entropy in quantum field theory., Comment: 20 pages. v2: references added. v3: added appendix A

We consider entanglement across a planar boundary in flat space. Entanglement entropy is usually thought of as the von Neumann entropy of a reduced density matrix, but it can also be thought of as half the von Neumann entropy of a product of reduced density matrices on the left and right. The latter form allows a natural regulator in which two cones are smoothed into a Euclidean hourglass geometry. Since there is no need to tensor-factor the Hilbert space, the regulated entropy is manifestly gauge-invariant and has a manifest state-counting interpretation. We explore this prescription for scalar fields, where the entropy is insensitive to a non-minimal coupling, and for Maxwell fields, which have the same entropy as $d-2$ scalars., Comment: 25 pages. v2: references added. v3: version to appear in PRD

We consider excited states in a CFT, obtained by applying a weak unitary perturbation to the vacuum. The perturbation is generated by the integral of a local operator $J^{(n)}$ of modular weight $n$ over a spacelike surface passing through $x = 0$. For $\vert n \vert \geq 2$ the modular Hamiltonian associated with a division of space at $x = 0$ picks up an endpoint contribution, sensitive to the details of the perturbation (including the shape of the spacelike surface) at $x = 0$. The endpoint contribution is a sum of light-ray moments of the perturbing operator $J^{(n)}$ and its descendants. For perturbations on null planes only moments of $J^{(n)}$ itself contribute., Comment: LaTeX, 35 pages. v2: references added, version to appear in JHEP

We study a set of CFT operators suitable for reconstructing a charged bulk scalar field $\phi$ in AdS${}_3$ (dual to an operator ${\cal O}$ of dimension $\Delta$ in the CFT) in the presence of a conserved spin-$n$ current in the CFT. One has to sum a tower of smeared non-primary scalars $\partial_{+}^{m} J^{(m)}$, where $J^{(m)}$ are primaries with twist $\Delta$ and spin $m$ built from ${\cal O}$ and the current. The coefficients of these operators can be fixed by demanding that bulk correlators are well-defined: with a simple ansatz this requirement allows us to calculate bulk correlators directly from the CFT. They are built from specific polynomials of the kinematic invariants up to a freedom to make field redefinitions. To order $1/N$ this procedure captures the dressing of the bulk scalar field by a radial generalized Wilson line., Comment: LaTeX, one figure, 28 pages

We compute modular Hamiltonians for excited states obtained by perturbing the vacuum with a unitary operator. We use operator methods and work to first order in the strength of the perturbation. For the most part we divide space in half and focus on perturbations generated by integrating a local operator $J$ over a null plane. Local operators with weight $n \geq 2$ under vacuum modular flow produce an additional endpoint contribution to the modular Hamiltonian. Intuitively this is because operators with weight $n \geq 2$ can move degrees of freedom from a region to its complement. The endpoint contribution is an integral of $J$ over a null plane. We show this in detail for stress tensor perturbations in two dimensions, where the result can be verified by a conformal transformation, and for scalar perturbations in a CFT. This lets us conjecture a general form for the endpoint contribution that applies to any field theory divided into half-spaces., Comment: 30 pages. v2: additional references and added an appendix (general n in d = 2)

We develop the representation of free spinor fields in the bulk of Lorentzian anti-de Sitter space in terms of smeared operators in the dual conformal field theory. To do this we expand the bulk field in a complete set of normalizable modes, work out the extrapolate dictionary for spinor fields, and show that the bulk field can be reconstructed from its near-boundary behavior. In some cases chirality and reality conditions can be imposed in the bulk. We study the action of the CFT modular Hamiltonian on bulk fermions to show that they transform with the expected spinor Lie derivative, and we calculate bulk--boundary two-point functions starting from CFT correlators., Comment: 31 pages

We point out a feature of the triangle diagram for three chiral currents which is perhaps not widely appreciated: Bose symmetry is not manifest and suffers from a momentum-routing ambiguity. Imposing Bose symmetry fixes the ambiguity and leads to the famous Adler - Bell - Jackiw anomaly., Comment: 10 pages. To appear in "Roman Jackiw: 80th Birthday Festschrift" edited by A. Niemi, T. Tomboulis, and K. K. Phua (World Scientific). v2: additional comments on covariant anomalies

Quasinormal modes describe the return to equilibrium of a perturbed system, in particular the ringdown phase of a black hole merger. But as globally-defined quantities, the quasinormal spectrum can be highly sensitive to global structure, including distant small perturbations to the potential. In what sense are quasinormal modes a property of the resulting black hole? We explore this question for the linearized perturbation equation with two potentials having disjoint bounded support. We give a composition law for the Wronskian that determines the quasinormal frequencies of the combined system. We show that over short time scales the evolution is governed by the quasinormal frequencies of the individual potentials, while the sensitivity to global structure can be understood in terms of echoes. We introduce an echo expansion of the Green's function and show that, as expected on general grounds, at any finite time causality limits the number of echoes that can contribute. We illustrate our results with the soluble example of a pair of $\delta$-function potentials. We explicate the causal structure of the Green's function, demonstrating under what conditions two very different quasinormal spectra give rise to very similar ringdown waveforms., Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures

We show that a black hole surrounded by scalar dark matter develops scalar hair. This is the generalization of a phenomenon pointed out by Jacobson, that a minimally coupled scalar with a non-trivial time dependence far away from the black hole would endow the black hole with hair. In our case, the time dependence arises from the oscillation of a scalar field with a non-zero mass. We systematically explore the scalar profile around the black hole for different scalar masses. In the small mass limit, the scalar field has a $1/r$ component at large radius $r$, consistent with Jacobson's result. In the large mass limit (with the Compton wavelength of order of the horizon or smaller), the scalar field has a $1/r^{3/4}$ profile yielding a pile-up close to the horizon, while distinctive nodes occur for intermediate masses. Thus, the dark matter profile around a black hole, while challenging to measure, contains information about the dark matter particle mass. As an application, we consider the case of the supermassive black hole at the center of M87, recently imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope. Its horizon size is roughly the Compton wavelength of a scalar particle of mass $10^{-20}$ eV. We consider the implications of the expected scalar pile-up close to the horizon, for fuzzy dark matter at a mass of $10^{-20}$ eV or below., Comment: 34 pages. v2: references added, link to animation fixed. v3: minor changes, more references, version to appear in JCAP

We study the action of the CFT total modular Hamiltonian on the CFT representation of bulk fields with spin. In the vacuum of the CFT the total modular Hamiltonian acts as a bulk Lie derivative, reducing on the RT surface to a boost perpendicular to the RT surface. This enables us to reconstruct bulk fields with spin from the CFT. On fields with gauge redundancies the total modular Hamiltonian acts as a bulk Lie derivative together with a compensating bulk gauge (or diffeomorphism) transformation to restore the original gauge. We consider the Lie algebra generated by the total modular Hamiltonians of all spherical CFT subregions and define weakly-maximal Lie subalgebras as proper subalgebras containing a maximal set of total modular Hamiltonians. In a CFT state with a bulk dual, we show that the bulk spacetime parametrizes the space of these weakly-maximal Lie subalgebras. Each such weakly-maximal Lie subalgebra induces Lorentz transformations at a particular point in the bulk manifold. The bulk metric dual to a pure CFT state is invariant at each point under this transformation. This condition fixes the metric up to a conformal factor that can be computed from knowledge of the equation parametrizing extremal surfaces. This gives a holographic notion of the invariance of a pure CFT state under CFT modular flow., Comment: 27 pages. v2: minor changes. v3: coordinates clarified, version to appear in JHEP

Fluid analog models for gravity are based on the idea that any spacetime geometry admits a reinterpretation in which space is thought of as a fluid flowing with a prescribed velocity. This fluid picture is a restatement of the ADM decomposition of the metric. Most of the literature has focused on flat spatial geometries and physical fluid flows, with a view toward possible laboratory realizations. Here we relax these conditions and consider fluid flows on curved and time-dependent spatial geometries, as a way of understanding and visualizing solutions to general relativity. We illustrate the utility of the approach with rotating black holes. For the Kerr black hole we develop a fluid description based on Doran coordinates. For spinning BTZ black holes we develop two different fluid descriptions. One involves static conical spatial slices, with the fluid orbiting the tip of the cone. The other resembles a cosmology, with the fluid flowing on a time-dependent cylindrical geometry., Comment: 21 pages. v2: minor edits, references added. v3: more references, appendix on geodesics. v4: appendix A expanded

Perturbative bulk reconstruction in AdS/CFT starts by representing a free bulk field $\phi^{(0)}$ as a smeared operator in the CFT. A series of $1/N$ corrections must be added to $\phi^{(0)}$ to represent an interacting bulk field $\phi$. These corrections have been determined in the literature from several points of view. Here we develop a new perspective. We show that correlation functions involving $\phi^{(0)}$ suffer from ambiguities due to analytic continuation. As a result $\phi^{(0)}$ fails to be a well-defined linear operator in the CFT. This means bulk reconstruction can be understood as a procedure for building up well-defined operators in the CFT which thereby singles out the interacting field $\phi$. We further propose that the difficulty with defining $\phi^{(0)}$ as a linear operator can be re-interpreted as a breakdown of associativity. Presumably $\phi^{(0)}$ can only be corrected to become an associative operator in perturbation theory. This suggests that quantum mechanics in the bulk is only valid in perturbation theory around a semiclassical bulk geometry., Comment: 22 pages. v2: references added

We show that bulk quantities localized on a minimal surface homologous to a boundary region correspond in the CFT to operators that commute with the modular Hamiltonian associated with the boundary region. If two such minimal surfaces intersect at a point in the bulk then CFT operators which commute with both extended modular Hamiltonians must be localized at the intersection point. We use this to construct local bulk operators purely from CFT considerations, without knowing the bulk metric, using intersecting modular Hamiltonians. For conformal field theories at zero and finite temperature the appropriate modular Hamiltonians are known explicitly and we recover known expressions for local bulk observables., Comment: 28 pages, LaTeX. v2: additional discussion of extended modular Hamiltonian. v3: version to appear in JHEP

We develop an approach to construct local bulk operators in a CFT to order $1/N^2$. Since 4-point functions are not fixed by conformal invariance we use the OPE to categorize possible forms for a bulk operator. Using previous results on 3-point functions we construct a local bulk operator in each OPE channel. We then impose the condition that the bulk operators constructed in different channels agree, and hence give rise to a well-defined bulk operator. We refer to this condition as the "bulk bootstrap." We argue and explicitly show in some examples that the bulk bootstrap leads to some of the same results as the regular conformal bootstrap. In fact the bulk bootstrap provides an easier way to determine some CFT data, since it does not require knowing the form of the conformal blocks. This analysis clarifies previous results on the relation between bulk locality and the bootstrap for theories with a $1/N$ expansion, and it identifies a simple and direct way in which OPE coefficients and anomalous dimensions determine the bulk equations of motion to order $1/N^2$., Comment: 37 pages, LaTeX. v2: added references and comments on OPE convergence, version to appear in JHEP

We develop the representation of infalling observers and bulk fields in the CFT as a way to understand the black hole interior in AdS. We first discuss properties of CFT states which are dual to black holes. We then show that in the presence of a Killing horizon bulk fields can be decomposed into pieces we call ingoing and outgoing. The ingoing field admits a simple operator representation in the CFT, even inside a small black hole at late times, which leads to a simple CFT description of infalling geodesics. This means classical infalling observers will experience the classical geometry in the interior. The outgoing piece of the field is more subtle. In an eternal two-sided geometry it can be represented as an operator on the left CFT. In a stable one-sided geometry it can be described using entanglement via the PR construction. But in an evaporating black hole trans-horizon entanglement breaks down at the Page time, which means that for old black holes the PR construction fails and the outgoing field does not see local geometry. This picture of the interior allows the CFT to reconcile unitary Hawking evaporation with the classical experience of infalling observers., Comment: 48 pages, LaTeX, 8 figures. v2: minor edits, additional reference. v3: version to appear in JHEP

To O(1/N) we derive, purely from CFT data, the bulk equations of motion for interacting scalar fields and for scalars coupled to gauge fields and gravity. We first uplift CFT operators to mimic local AdS fields by imposing bulk microcausality. This requires adding an infinite tower of smeared higher-dimension double-trace operators to the CFT definition of a bulk field, with coefficients that we explicitly compute. By summing the contribution of the higher-dimension operators we derive the equations of motion satisfied by these uplifted CFT operators and show that we precisely recover the expected bulk equations of motion. We exhibit the freedom in the CFT construction which corresponds to bulk field redefinitions., Comment: 62 pages, LaTeX, 304 equations. v2: minor edits, reference added. v3: minor improvements, version to appear in JHEP

We consider bulk quantum fields in AdS/CFT in the background of an eternal black hole. We show that for black holes with finite entropy, correlation functions of semiclassical bulk operators close to the horizon deviate from their semiclassical value and are ill-defined inside the horizon. This is due to the large-time behavior of correlators in a unitary CFT, and means the region near and inside the horizon receives corrections. We give a prescription for modifying the definition of a bulk field in a black hole background, such that one can still define operators that mimic the inside of the horizon, but at the price of violating microcausality. For supergravity fields we find that commutators at spacelike separation generically ~ exp(-S/2). Similar results hold for stable black holes that form in collapse. The general lesson may be that a small amount of non-locality, even over arbitrarily large spacelike distances, is an essential aspect of non-perturbative quantum gravity., Comment: 43 pages, 7 figures. v2: additional appendix on finite-entropy correlators, additional references, version to appear in JHEP

We construct smeared CFT operators which represent a scalar field in AdS interacting with gravity. The guiding principle is micro-causality: scalar fields should commute with themselves at spacelike separation. To O(1/N) we show that a correct and convenient criterion for constructing the appropriate CFT operators is to demand micro-causality in a three-point function with a boundary Weyl tensor and another boundary scalar. The resulting bulk observables transform in the correct way under AdS isometries and commute with boundary scalar operators at spacelike separation, even in the presence of metric perturbations., Comment: LaTeX, 44 pages. v2: some points clarified, version to appear in PRD

We compute the mutual information of two Hawking particles emitted consecutively by an evaporating black hole. Following Page, we find that the mutual information is of order exp(-S) where S is the entropy of the black hole. We speculate on implications for black hole unitarity, in particular on a possible failure of locality at large distances., Comment: 4 pages, LaTeX, 1 figure

We study the collapse of a fuzzy sphere, that is a spherical membrane built out of D0-branes, in the BFSS model. At weak coupling, as the sphere shrinks, open strings are produced. If the initial radius is large then open string production is not important and the sphere behaves classically. At intermediate initial radius the back-reaction from open string production is important but the fuzzy sphere retains its identity. At small initial radius the sphere collapses to form a black hole. The crossover between the later two regimes is smooth and occurs at the correspondence point of Horowitz and Polchinski., Comment: 27 pages, LaTeX, 2 figures. v2: additional references

We study the process of bound state formation in a D-brane collision. We consider two mechanisms for bound state formation. The first, operative at weak coupling in the worldvolume gauge theory, is pair creation of W-bosons. The second, operative at strong coupling, corresponds to formation of a large black hole in the dual supergravity. These two processes agree qualitatively at intermediate coupling, in accord with the correspondence principle of Horowitz and Polchinski. We show that the size of the bound state and timescale for formation of a bound state agree at the correspondence point. The timescale involves matching a parametric resonance in the gauge theory to a quasinormal mode in supergravity., Comment: 29 pages, 5 figures. v2: minor improvements, additional reference, version to appear in PRD

We develop the representation of interacting bulk gauge fields and charged scalar matter in AdS in terms of non-local observables in the dual CFT. We work in holographic gauge in the bulk, A_z = 0. The correct statement of micro-causality in holographic gauge is somewhat subtle, so we first discuss it from the bulk point of view. We then show that in the 1/N expansion CFT correlators can be lifted to obtain bulk correlation functions which satisfy micro-causality. This requires adding an infinite tower of higher-dimension multi-trace operators to the CFT definition of a bulk observable. For conserved currents the Ward identities in the CFT prevent the construction of truly local bulk operators (i.e. operators that commute at spacelike separation with everything), however the resulting non-local commutators are exactly those required by the bulk Gauss constraint. In contrast a CFT which only has non-conserved currents can be lifted to a bulk theory which is truly local. Although our explicit calculations are for gauge theory, similar statements should hold for gravity., Comment: 34 pages. v2: minor edits, version to appear in PRD

In previous work it was shown that, in accord with the Brandenberger-Vafa mechanism, three is the maximum number of spatial dimensions that can grow large cosmologically from an initial thermal fluctuation. Here we complement that work by considering the possibility of successive fluctuations. Suppose an initial fluctuation causes at least one dimension to grow, and suppose successive fluctuations occur on timescales of order alpha'^{1/2}. If the string coupling is sufficiently large, we show that such fluctuations are likely to push a three-dimensional subspace to large volume where winding modes annihilate. In this setting three is the preferred number of large dimensions. Although encouraging, a more careful study of the dynamics and statistics of fluctuations is needed to assess the likelihood of our assumptions., Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures. v2: additional references, various improvements for clarity. v3: more improvements, version to appear in PRD

We study the interaction between two parallel cosmic strings induced by gauge fields and by scalar fields with non-minimal couplings to curvature. For small deficit angles the gauge field behaves like a collection of non-minimal scalars with a specific value for the non-minimal coupling. We check this equivalence by computing the interaction energy between strings at first order in the deficit angles. This result provides another physical context for the "contact terms" which play an important role in the renormalization of black hole entropy due to a spin-1 field., Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX, 1 figure. v2: references added. v3: more references, version to appear in PRD

We develop the representation of bulk fields with spin one and spin two in anti-de Sitter space, as non-local observables in the dual CFT. Working in holographic gauge in the bulk, at leading order in 1/N bulk gauge fields are obtained by smearing boundary currents over a sphere on the complexified boundary, while linearized metric fluctuations are obtained by smearing the boundary stress tensor over a ball. This representation respects AdS covariance up to a compensating gauge transformation. We also consider massive vector fields, where the bulk field is obtained by smearing a non-conserved current. We compute bulk two-point functions and show that bulk locality is respected. We show how to include interactions of massive vectors using 1/N perturbation theory, and we comment on the issue of general backgrounds., Comment: 45 pages, LaTeX, 1 figure. v2: corrected typo in equation (75)

We study the interplay of thermal and diffractive effects in Casimir energies. We consider plates with edges, oriented either parallel or perpendicular to each other, as well as a single plate with a slit. We compute the Casimir energy at finite temperature using a formalism in which the diffractive effects are encoded in a lower dimensional non-local field theory that lives in the gap between the plates. The formalism allows for a clean separation between direct or geometric effects and diffractive effects, and makes an analytic derivation of the temperature dependence of the free energy possible. At low temperatures, with Dirichlet boundary conditions on the plates, we find that diffractive effects make a correction to the free energy which scales as T^6 for perpendicular plates, as T^4 for slits, and as T^4 log T for parallel plates., Comment: 31 pages, 7 figures, LaTeX. v2: minor typos fixed, version to appear in PRD

Local operators in the bulk of AdS can be represented as smeared operators in the dual CFT. We show how to construct these bulk observables by requiring that the bulk operators commute at spacelike separation. This extends our previous work by taking interactions into account. Large-N factorization plays a key role in the construction. We show diagrammatically how this procedure is related to bulk Feynman diagrams., Comment: 41 pages, LaTeX. v2: reference corrected

We study the leading long-distance attractive force between two holes in a plate arising from a scalar field with Dirichlet boundary conditions on the plate. We use a formalism in which the interaction is governed by a non-local field theory which lives on the two holes. The interaction energy is proportional to Q_1 Q_2/r^7 at large separation r, where Q_1 and Q_2 are certain charges associated with the holes. We compute these charges for round and rectangular holes. We show that the 1/r^7 behavior is universal for separations large compared to the linear dimensions of the holes, irrespective of the spin or interactions of the bosonic field. We also study the interaction between two long thin slits, for which the energy falls off as 1/r^6., Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures. v2: minor changes, version to appear in PRD

The prototypical Casimir effect arises when a scalar field is confined between parallel Dirichlet boundaries. We study corrections to this when the boundaries themselves have apertures and edges. We consider several geometries: a single plate with a slit in it, perpendicular plates separated by a gap, and two parallel plates, one of which has a long slit of large width, related to the case of one plate being semi-infinite. We develop a general formalism for studying such problems, based on the wavefunctional for the field in the gap between the plates. This formalism leads to a lower dimensional theory defined on the open regions of the plates or boundaries. The Casimir energy is then given in terms of the determinant of the nonlocal differential operator which defines the lower dimensional theory. We develop perturbative methods for computing these determinants. Our results are in good agreement with known results based on Monte Carlo simulations. The method is well suited to isolating the diffractive contributions to the Casimir energy., Comment: 32 pages, LaTeX, 9 figures. v2: additional discussion of renormalization procedure, version to appear in PRD. v3: corrected a sign error in (70)

The universe may have extra spatial dimensions with large volume that we cannot perceive because the energy required to excite modes in the extra directions is too high. Many examples are known of such manifolds with a large volume and a large mass gap. These compactifications can help explain the weakness of four-dimensional gravity and, as we show here, they also have the capacity to produce reasonable potentials for an inflaton field. Modeling the inflaton as a bulk scalar field, it becomes very weakly coupled in four dimensions, and this enables us to build phenomenologically acceptable inflationary models with tunings at the few per mil level. We speculate on dark matter candidates and the possibility of braneless models in this setting., Comment: 21 pages, LaTeX, 2 pdf figures. v2: additional references. v3: added comments on moduli stabilization

We show that, in the presence of a string gas, simple higher-derivative modifications to the effective action for gravity can lead to bouncing and cyclic cosmological models. The modifications bound the expansion rate and avoid singularities at finite times. In these models the scale factors can have long loitering phases that solve the horizon problem. Adding a potential for the dilaton gives a simple realization of the pre-big bang scenario. Entropy production in the cyclic phase drives an eventual transition to a radiation-dominated universe. As a test of the Brandenberger-Vafa scenario, we comment on the probability of decompactifying three spatial dimensions in this class of models., Comment: 35 pages, LaTeX, 9 figures. v2: additional references. v3: comments on Einstein frame, version to appear in PRD

We discuss models that can account for today's dark energy. The underlying cosmological constant may be Planck scale but starts as a redundant coupling which can be eliminated by a field redefinition. The observed vacuum energy arises when the redundancy is explicitly broken, say by a non-minimal coupling to curvature. We give a recipe for constructing models, including R + 1/R type models, that realize this mechanism and satisfy all solar system constraints on gravity. A similar model, based on Gauss-Bonnet gravity, provides a technically natural explanation for dark energy and exhibits an interesting see-saw behavior: a large underlying cosmological constant gives rise to both low and high curvature solutions. Such models could be statistically favored in the string landscape., Comment: 39 pages. Appendix added. Version to appear in Phys. Rev. D

This paper has two parts. First we review the description of local bulk operators in Lorentzian AdS in terms of non-local operators in the boundary CFT. We discuss how bulk locality arises in pure AdS backgrounds and how it is modified at finite N. Next we present some new results on BTZ black holes: local operators can be defined inside the horizon of a finite N BTZ black hole, in a way that suggests the BTZ geometry describes an average over black hole microstates, but with finite N effects resolving the singularity., Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, AMS-LaTeX. v2: additional comments on cutoff. v3: corrected a normalization

To gain insight into how bulk locality emerges from the holographic conformal field theory, we reformulate the bulk to boundary map in as local a way as possible. In previous work, we carried out this program for Lorentzian AdS, and showed the support on the boundary could always be reduced to a compact region spacelike separated from the bulk point. In the present work the idea is extended to a complexified boundary, where spatial coordinates are continued to imaginary values. This continuation enables us to represent a local bulk operator as a CFT operator with support on a finite disc on the complexified boundary. We treat general AdS in Poincare coordinates and AdS3 in Rindler coordinates. We represent bulk operators inside the horizon of a BTZ black hole and we verify that the correct bulk two point functions are reproduced, including the divergence when one point hits the BTZ singularity. We comment on the holographic description of black holes formed by collapse and discuss locality and holographic entropy counting at finite N., Comment: 37 pages, LaTeX, 4 eps figures. v2: expanded introduction, version to appear in PRD

The Lorentzian AdS/CFT correspondence implies a map between local operators in supergravity and non-local operators in the CFT. By explicit computation we construct CFT operators which are dual to local bulk fields in the semiclassical limit. The computation is done for general dimension in global, Poincare and Rindler coordinates. We find that the CFT operators can be taken to have compact support in a region of the complexified boundary whose size is set by the bulk radial position. We show that at finite N the number of independent commuting operators localized within a bulk volume saturates the holographic bound., Comment: 36 pages, LaTeX, 4 eps figures

We compute the force between oppositely charged W bosons in the large N limit of Yang-Mills with 16 supercharges broken to SU(N) x U(1) by a finite Higgs vev. We clarify some issues regarding Wilson line computations and show that there is a regime in which the force between W bosons is independent of separation distance., Comment: 11 pages, LaTeX, v2: misprint corrected, v3: references added

We develop the representation of local bulk fields in AdS by non-local operators on the boundary, working in the semiclassical limit and using AdS_2 as our main example. In global coordinates we show that the boundary operator has support only at points which are spacelike separated from the bulk point. We construct boundary operators that represent local bulk operators inserted behind the horizon of the Poincare patch and inside the Rindler horizon of a two dimensional black hole. We show that these operators respect bulk locality and comment on the generalization of our construction to higher dimensional AdS black holes., Comment: 28 pages, 4 figures, latex

We study string dynamics in the early universe. Our motivation is the proposal of Brandenberger and Vafa, that string winding modes may play a key role in decompactifying three spatial dimensions. We model the universe as a homogeneous but anisotropic 9-torus filled with a gas of excited strings. We adopt initial conditions which fix the dilaton and the volume of the torus, but otherwise assume all states are equally likely. We study the evolution of the system both analytically and numerically to determine the late-time behavior. We find that, although dynamical evolution can indeed lead to three large spatial dimensions, such an outcome is not statistically favored., Comment: 26 pages, LaTeX, 4 eps figures

We show that the amount of particle production in an arbitrary cosmological background can be determined using only the late-time positive-frequency modes. We don't refer to modes at early times, so there is no need for a Bogolubov transformation. We also show that particle production can be extracted from the Feynman propagator in an auxiliary spacetime. This provides a first-quantized formalism for computing particle production which, unlike conventional Bogolubov transformations, may be amenable to a string-theoretic generalization., Comment: 18 pages, LaTeX; v2: significantly revised for clarity; conclusions unchanged

We consider the thermodynamic and cosmological properties of brane gases in the early universe. Working in the low energy limit of M-theory we assume the universe is a homogeneous but anisotropic 10-torus containing wrapped 2-branes and a supergravity gas. We describe the thermodynamics of this system and estimate a Hagedorn temperature associated with excitations on the branes. We investigate the cross-section for production of branes from the thermal bath and derive Boltzmann equations governing the number of wrapped branes. A brane gas may lead to decompactification of three spatial dimensions. To investigate this possibility we adopt initial conditions in which we fix the volume of the torus but otherwise assume all states are equally likely. We solve the Einstein-Boltzmann equations numerically, to determine the number of dimensions with no wrapped branes at late times; these unwrapped dimensions are expected to decompactify. Finally we consider holographic bounds on the initial volume, and find that for allowed initial volumes all branes typically annihilate before freeze-out can occur., Comment: 33 pages, LaTeX, 6 figures. v2: added references

We propose that stretched horizons can be described in terms of a gas of non-interacting quasiparticles. The quasiparticles are unstable, with a lifetime set by the imaginary part of the lowest quasinormal mode frequency. If the horizon arises from an AdS/CFT style duality the quasiparticles are also the effective low-energy degrees of freedom of the finite-temperature CFT. We analyze a large class of models including Schwarzschild black holes, non-extremal Dp-branes, the rotating BTZ black hole and de Sitter space, and we comment on degenerate horizons. The quasiparticle description makes manifest the relationship between entropy and area., Comment: 39 pages, LaTeX. v2: references added. v3: additional comments

We propose an effective description of 0-brane black holes, in which the black hole is modeled as a gas of non-interacting quasi-particles in the dual quantum mechanics. This simple model is shown to account for many of the static thermodynamic properties of the black hole. It also accounts for dynamical properties, such as the rate at which energy gets thermalized by the black hole. We use the model to show that the entropy of the quantum mechanics is proportional to the black hole horizon area in Planck units., Comment: 20 pages, LaTeX, 2 eps figures. v2: references added