Emergence in Holographic Scenarios for Gravity

Abstract

'Holographic' relations between theories have become an important theme in quantum gravity research. These relations entail that a theory without gravity is equivalent to a gravitational theory with an extra spatial dimension. The idea of holography was first proposed in 1993 by Gerard 't Hooft on the basis of his studies of evaporating black holes. Soon afterwards the holographic 'AdS/CFT' duality was introduced, which since has been intensively studied in the string theory community and beyond. Recently, Erik Verlinde has proposed that even Newton's law of gravitation can be related holographically to the `thermodynamics of information' on screens. We discuss these scenarios, with special attention to the status of the holographic relation in them and to the question of whether they make gravity and spacetime emergent. We conclude that only Verlinde's scheme straightfowardly instantiates emergence. However, assuming a non-standard interpretation of AdS/CFT may create room for the emergence of spacetime and gravity there as well.

34 pages, 4 figures. v2: some additions, references added. Journal version in Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics

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• Towards a Theory of Emergence for the Physical Sciences
• The Heuristic Function of Duality
• Conceptual Analysis of Black Hole Entropy in String Theory
• String theory, Einstein, and the identity of physics: Theory assessment in absence of the empirical
• Emergence and Correspondence for String Theory Black Holes
• The Empirical Under-determination Argument Against Scientific Realism for Dual Theories
• The multiple realizability of general relativity in quantum gravity
• The Invisibility of Diffeomorphisms
• Field equations for Lovelock gravity: An alternative route
• Holographic Strange Metals for Philosophers and Physicists
• Holography as an Information Principle in Quantum Gravity
• Spacetime from Entanglement: The Emergence of Metric, Gravity, or Topology