Holographic Approaches to Black Holes, Cosmology and Entanglement

我建议研究粒子物理、弦论和宇宙学界面上的基本问题。我将集中讨论量子引力中的基本概念谜题，特别是与黑洞物理和宇宙学相关的问题。为了解决这些问题，我将使用全息原理，这可能是我们在研究量子引力方面最强大的工具。特别是，我将在粒子物理和量子信息理论的交界处利用新兴的全息技术。这将使我们能够解决理论物理中一些最基本和最长期存在的问题--那些关于时空的基本结构和我们的可观测宇宙从大爆炸奇点起源的问题。*理论物理中许多最深的问题都涉及黑洞。黑洞视界的本质是什么？黑洞会破坏信息吗？以前解决这些问题的尝试只集中在特殊类别的黑洞上，这些黑洞在性质上与天体物理学相关的黑洞不同。如果我们想要了解现实黑洞的动力学，比如我们银河系中心的黑洞，就必须解决这个缺点。*第二组问题是由最近的天文观测引发的，这些观测表明，宇宙始于一次奇点大爆炸，随后是一段被称为暴胀的指数膨胀期。这两个特征--宇宙学奇点和膨胀阶段--都没有在完全一致的量子引力理论中得到成功的描述。如果我们要成功地描述可观测的宇宙，就必须解决这些问题，这些问题提供了与实验数据接触的令人兴奋的前景。*为了解决这些问题，我们需要新的工具和技术，使我们能够在广义相对论崩溃的情况下理解量子引力。最有用的这种工具是全息对应(或全息术)，它声称空间区域中的量子引力等同于该区域边界上的理论。全息术以其最精确的形式，被称为反德西特/共形场理论(ADS/CFT)对应，使我们能够以精确的方式解决这些以前无法解决的问题。*最近，这些技术揭示了量子引力和量子信息理论之间的有趣关系。特别是，量子纠缠-也许是量子力学最基本和最神秘的特征-似乎与黑洞物理密切相关，并在经典时空从更基本的量子自由度中出现的过程中发挥着重要作用。这对黑洞物理产生了质的新的见解，也可能应用于宇宙学。不同领域之间的这种惊人的思想交流是这项提议的长期目标之一。

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.**