Dualities and Emergent Gravity: Gauge/Gravity Duality

Abstract

In this paper I develop a framework for relating dualities and emergence: two notions that are close to each other but also exclude one another. I adopt the conception of duality as 'isomorphism', cashing it out in terms of three conditions. These three conditions prompt two conceptually different ways in which a duality can be modified to make room for emergence; and I argue that this exhausts the possibilities for combining dualities and emergence (via coarse-graining). I apply this framework to gauge/gravity dualities, considering in detail three examples: AdS/CFT, Verlinde's scheme, and black holes. My main point about gauge/gravity dualities is that the theories involved, qua theories of gravity, must be background-independent. I distinguish two senses of background-independence: (i) minimalistic and (ii) extended. The former is sufficiently strong to allow for a consistent theory of quantum gravity; and AdS/CFT is background-independent on this account; while Verlinde's scheme best fits the extended sense. I argue that this extended sense should be applied with some caution: on pain of throwing the baby (general relativity) out with the bath-water (extended background-independence). Nevertheless, it is an interesting and potentially fruitful heuristic principle for quantum gravity theory construction. The interpretation of dualities is articulated in terms of: (i) epistemic and metaphysical commitments; (ii) parts vs. wholes. I then analyse the emergence of gravity in gauge/gravity dualities in terms of the two available conceptualisations of emergence; and I show how emergence in AdS/CFT and in Verlinde's scenario differ from each other. Finally, I give a novel derivation of the Bekenstein-Hawking black hole entropy formula based on Verlinde's scheme; the derivation sheds light on several aspects of Verlinde's scheme and how it compares to Bekenstein's original calculation.

Written for a special issue of Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics. v2: final journal version, substantially expanded. 40 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Emergence, Reduction and Supervenience: a Varied Landscape
• Some remarks on the notions of general covariance and background independence
• Emergence in Holographic Scenarios for Gravity
• Target Space $\ne$ Space
• Instantons and the Hartle-Hawking-Maldacena Proposal for dS/CFT

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Conceptual Aspects of Gauge/Gravity Duality
• Interpreting Theories without a Spacetime
• On Empirical Equivalence and Duality
• Towards a Theory of Emergence for the Physical Sciences
• The Heuristic Function of Duality
• Conceptual Analysis of Black Hole Entropy in String Theory
• Emergence and Correspondence for String Theory Black Holes
• Holography without holography: How to turn inter-representational into intra-theoretical relations in AdS/CFT
• The multiple realizability of general relativity in quantum gravity
• The Empirical Under-determination Argument Against Scientific Realism for Dual Theories
• The Invisibility of Diffeomorphisms
• Spacetime from Entanglement: The Emergence of Metric, Gravity, or Topology
• Holography as an Information Principle in Quantum Gravity
• Holographic Strange Metals for Philosophers and Physicists