Baby Universes, Holography, and the Swampland

Abstract

On the basis of a number of Swampland conditions, we argue that the Hilbert space of baby universe states must be one-dimensional in a consistent theory of quantum gravity. This scenario may be interpreted as a type of "Gauss's law for entropy" in quantum gravity, and provides a clean synthesis of the tension between Euclidean wormholes and a standard interpretation of the holographic dictionary, with no need for an ensemble. Our perspective relies crucially on the recently-proposed potential for quantum-mechanical gauge redundancies between states of the universe with different topologies. By an application of the state-operator correspondence, this proposal rules out the possibility of nontrivial, strictly well-defined bulk operators supported in a compact region. We further comment on the possible exceptions in $d\le 3$ for this hypothesis, and the role of an ensemble for holographic theories in low dimensions, such as JT gravity in $d=2$ and possible cousins in $d=3$. We argue that these examples are incomplete physical theories that should be viewed as branes in a higher dimensional theory of quantum gravity, for which an ensemble plays no role.

arXiv comment27 pages, 3 figures; new section on operators added, minor edits, references added

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