PIRSA:25060028

Baby Universes and Holography: the Case of the Vanishing Universe

Engelhardt, N. (2025). Baby Universes and Holography: the Case of the Vanishing Universe. Perimeter Institute. https://pirsa.org/25060028

Engelhardt, Netta. Baby Universes and Holography: the Case of the Vanishing Universe. Perimeter Institute, Jun. 27, 2025, https://pirsa.org/25060028 

          @misc{ pirsa_PIRSA:25060028,
            doi = {10.48660/25060028},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/25060028},
            author = {Engelhardt, Netta},
            keywords = {Quantum Gravity, Quantum Information},
            language = {en},
            title = {Baby Universes and Holography: the Case of the Vanishing Universe},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2025},
            month = {jun},
            note = {PIRSA:25060028 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }

Netta Engelhardt Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Talk numberPIRSA:25060028
DOI10.48660/25060028
Collection
Talk Type Conference
Subject

Abstract

A number of recent arguments have suggested that baby universes in quantum gravity have a one-dimensional Hilbert space. I will provide a new argument, based on work with E. Gesteau, in favor of this conclusion. The argument makes use of a standard asymptotically AdS spacetime dual to a thermal state below the Hawking-Page transition. In particular, there is a low-energy, low-complexity causal wedge operator whose expectation value in the dual CFT is only consistent with a one-dimensional Hilbert space for baby universes.