Quantcast
  • Register
PhysicsOverflow is a next-generation academic platform for physicists and astronomers, including a community peer review system and a postgraduate-level discussion forum analogous to MathOverflow.

Welcome to PhysicsOverflow! PhysicsOverflow is an open platform for community peer review and graduate-level Physics discussion.

Please help promote PhysicsOverflow ads elsewhere if you like it.

News

PO is now at the Physics Department of Bielefeld University!

New printer friendly PO pages!

Migration to Bielefeld University was successful!

Please vote for this year's PhysicsOverflow ads!

Please do help out in categorising submissions. Submit a paper to PhysicsOverflow!

... see more

Tools for paper authors

Submit paper
Claim Paper Authorship

Tools for SE users

Search User
Reclaim SE Account
Request Account Merger
Nativise imported posts
Claim post (deleted users)
Import SE post

Users whose questions have been imported from Physics Stack Exchange, Theoretical Physics Stack Exchange, or any other Stack Exchange site are kindly requested to reclaim their account and not to register as a new user.

Public \(\beta\) tools

Report a bug with a feature
Request a new functionality
404 page design
Send feedback

Attributions

(propose a free ad)

Site Statistics

205 submissions , 163 unreviewed
5,082 questions , 2,232 unanswered
5,354 answers , 22,789 comments
1,470 users with positive rep
820 active unimported users
More ...

  Partition Functions in (A)dS/CFT

+ 5 like - 0 dislike
661 views

I'm trying to understand some aspects of dS/CFT, and I'm running into a little trouble. Any help would be much appreciated.

In arXix:1104.2621, Harlow and Stanford showed that the late-time Hartle-Hawking state in de Sitter space, \begin{align*} \Psi[h]=\int_{dS} Dg_{g|_{\partial dS}=h} \exp(iS(g)) \end{align*} is the analytic continuation of the infrared wavefunction from anti-de Sitter space near the boundary, \begin{align*} \Psi_{\text{IR}}[h]=\lim_{z\to \partial AdS}\int_{AdS}Dg_{g|_{z}=h}\exp(-S(g)). \end{align*} For simplicity I've taken the metric to be the only field in the theory.

Maldacena's formulation of dS/CFT in arXiv:astro-ph/0210603 is that the partition function of the dual CFT is equal to the Hartle-Hawking state at late times, i.e. $Z[h]=\Psi[h]$. Now, if I take $h$ to be the metric on a sphere cross a circle, say, then $\Psi_{\text{IR}}$ computes the finite temperature partition function of the CFT dual to the AdS theory. This seems to imply that the partition function of the dual to the dS theory is just the analytic continuation of the partition function of the dual to the AdS theory.

However, this seems to contradict the only known example of dS/CFT, which is the $SP(n)$ theory dual to Vasiliev theory on $dS_4$, conjectured in arXiv:1108.5735. In this case, the dS/CFT partition function is that of fermions at finite temperature, while the AdS/CFT partition function is that of bosons. These are definitely not analytic continuations of one another under $\Lambda\to -\Lambda$.

Any ideas?

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)
asked Nov 16, 2011 in Theoretical Physics by Matthew (320 points) [ no revision ]
retagged Apr 19, 2014 by dimension10
There are many users with flawed arguments but lots of self-confidence in suggesting that they have invalidated quantum mechanics, relativity, or anything else. You're exactly the person who should get a lot of self-confidence because you got very far: but you end up as a dove. Isn't it you who should say more clearly that this is a fundamental inconsistency of the whole dS/CFT paradigm? This inconsistency is copied from the same one that spoiled the "S-branes"; it was always an incoherent union of "S-branes are continuations of D-branes" (instantons) and "they are mathematically independent".

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)
Hi Lubos, thanks for the kind words, but I thought of a possible resolution to this question. Since the SP(n) theory has fermions, we need to impose antiperiodic boundary conditions in order to calculate the partition function. This will probably modify the boundary conditions on the bulk fields, so the partition function won't be just analytically continued from AdS (not that I have any idea how to make this explicit).

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

Your answer

Please use answers only to (at least partly) answer questions. To comment, discuss, or ask for clarification, leave a comment instead.
To mask links under text, please type your text, highlight it, and click the "link" button. You can then enter your link URL.
Please consult the FAQ for as to how to format your post.
This is the answer box; if you want to write a comment instead, please use the 'add comment' button.
Live preview (may slow down editor)   Preview
Your name to display (optional):
Privacy: Your email address will only be used for sending these notifications.
Anti-spam verification:
If you are a human please identify the position of the character covered by the symbol $\varnothing$ in the following word:
p$\hbar$ysics$\varnothing$verflow
Then drag the red bullet below over the corresponding character of our banner. When you drop it there, the bullet changes to green (on slow internet connections after a few seconds).
Please complete the anti-spam verification




user contributions licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 with attribution required

Your rights
...