Reconstructing spacetime from the hologram, even in the classical limit, requires physics beyond the Planck scale

Abstract

We argue in this essay that for classical configurations of gravity in the AdS/CFT setup, it is in general impossible to reconstruct the bulk geometry from the leading asymptotic behavior of the classical fields in gravity alone. This is possible sufficiently near the vacuum, but not more generally. We argue this by using a counter-example that utilizes the supersymmetric geometries constructed by Lin, Lunin, and Maldacena. In the dual quantum field theory, the additional data required to complete the geometry is encoded in modes that near the vacuum geometry lie beyond the Planck scale.

6 pages, Essay written for the Gravity Research Foundation 2016 Awards for Essays on Gravitation. v2: updated references

References in corpus (4)

• Constructing local bulk observables in interacting AdS/CFT
• Anatomy of bubbling solutions
• Integrability vs. Information Loss: A Simple Example
• Quantum geometry and gravitational entropy

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