Negative energy, superluminosity, and holography

Joseph Polchinski, Leonard Susskind, and Nicolaos Toumbas
Phys. Rev. D 60, 084006 – Published 14 September 1999
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Abstract

The holographic connection between large N super Yang-Mills (SYM) theory and gravity in anti–de Sitter (AdS) space requires unfamiliar behavior of the SYM theory in the limit that the curvature of the AdS geometry becomes small. The paradoxical behavior includes superluminal oscillations and negative energy density. These effects typically occur in the SYM description of events which take place far from the boundary of AdS when the signal from the event arrives at the boundary. The paradoxes can be resolved by assuming a very rich collection of hidden degrees of freedom of the SYM theory which store information but give rise to no local energy density. These degrees of freedom, called precursors, are needed to make possible sudden apparently acausal energy momentum flows. Such behavior would be impossible in classical field theory as a consequence of the positivity of the energy density. However we show that these effects are not only allowed in quantum field theory but that we can model them in free quantum field theory.

  • Received 6 April 1999

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.60.084006

©1999 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Joseph Polchinski

  • Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106-4030

Leonard Susskind and Nicolaos Toumbas

  • Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305-4060

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Issue

Vol. 60, Iss. 8 — 15 October 1999

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