Holographic Approaches to Black Holes, Cosmology and Entanglement

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I propose to investigate foundational questions at the interface of particle physics, string theory and cosmology. I will focus on basic conceptual puzzles in quantum gravity, and in particular on problems related to the physics of black holes and cosmology. To address these questions I will use the holographic principle, perhaps our most powerful tool in the study of quantum gravity. In particular, I will utilize emerging holographic techniques at the interface of particle physics and quantum information theory. This will allow us to address some of the most fundamental and long-standing problems in theoretical physics - those concerning the basic structure of space-time and the origin of our observable universe from a big bang singularity.***Many of the deepest questions in theoretical physics involve black holes. What is the nature of a black hole event horizon? Do black holes destroy information? Previous attempts to address these questions have focused only on special classes of black holes, which differ qualitatively from those relevant for astrophysics. This shortcoming must be addressed if we wish to understand the dynamics of realistic black holes, such as the one at the center of our galaxy.***A second set of questions is motivated by recent astronomical observations indicating that the universe began with a big bang singularity, followed by a period of exponential expansion known as inflation. Neither of these two features - the cosmological singularity and the inflating phase - have been successfully described in a fully consistent quantum theory of gravity. These problems, which must be solved if we are to successfully describe the observable universe, offer the exciting prospect of contact with experimental data.***To address these problems we need new tools and techniques to enable us to make sense of quantum gravity in regimes where general relativity breaks down. The most useful such tool is the holographic correspondence (or holography), which states that quantum gravity in a region of space is equivalent to a theory on the boundary of that region. In its most precise form, known as the Anti-de Sitter/Conformal Field Theory (AdS/CFT) correspondence, holography has allowed us to address these previously unsolvable problems in an exact manner.***Recently, these techniques have revealed a fascinating relationship between quantum gravity and quantum information theory. In particular, quantum entanglement - perhaps the most basic and mysterious feature of quantum mechanics - appears to be intimately related to black hole physics, and plays an important role in the emergence of classical space-time from more fundamental quantum degrees of freedom. This has yielded qualitatively new insights into black hole physics, and may have applications to cosmology as well. This remarkable cross-fertilization of ideas between different fields is one of the long-term goals of this proposal.**