Gravitational dynamics from entanglement “Thermodynamics”

Theory Seminars

Speaker: Mark Van Raamsdonk, University of British Columbia
Date & Time: October 7, 2013 12:00 - 13:00
Location: UBC, Hennings 318
Local Contact: Fei Zhou
Intended Audience: Graduate

AdS/CFT appears to provide a definition of certain theories of quantum gravity based on ordinary quantum field theories. A significant open question is how and why spacetime / gravity emerge from the CFT physics. In this talk, I will discuss recent work suggesting that spacetime emerges due to the entanglement of degrees of freedom in the CFT. I will also show that a universal relation obeyed by entanglement entropies in conformal field theory can be used to show that for CFT states near the vacuum state, the corresponding bulk spacetime must satisfy Einstein’s equations to linear order.