Sanjit Shashi, UT-Austin

"The Holography of Boundaries in Quantum Gravity"

Abstract: Duality is a pervasive concept in the study of quantum gravity and string theory. One particularly profound manifestation of this idea is ``holographic" duality relating quantum gravity in d+1 dimensions to quantum field theory in d dimensions, with the most concrete example being the anti-de Sitter (AdS)/conformal field theory (CFT) correspondence. Guided by AdS/CFT, we explore the holographic interpretation of boundaries in conformal field theory. We demonstrate how various gravitational constructs and physics in AdS can be associated with specific boundary data in CFT. We also discuss some recent applications of holographic boundaries to longstanding questions in semiclassical quantum gravity regarding the black-hole information paradox and the role of Euclidean wormholes in the path integral.