REVIEW 7 cited by
Pure Gravity and Conical Defects
Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.
This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.
SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event
T0 review · schema-true
One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.
pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp
Pure Gravity and Conical Defects
read the original abstract
We revisit the spectrum of pure quantum gravity in AdS$_3$. The computation of the torus partition function will -- if computed using a gravitational path integral that includes only smooth saddle points -- lead to a density of states which is not physically sensible, as it has a negative degeneracy of states for some energies and spins. We consider a minimal cure for this non-unitarity of the pure gravity partition function, which involves the inclusion of additional states below the black hole threshold. We propose a geometric interpretation for these extra states: they are conical defects with deficit angle $2\pi(1-1/N)$, where $N$ is a positive integer. That only integer values of $N$ should be included can be seen from a modular bootstrap argument, and leads us to propose a modest extension of the set of saddle-point configurations that contribute to the gravitational path integral: one should sum over orbifolds in addition to smooth manifolds. These orbifold states are below the black hole threshold and are regarded as massive particles in AdS, but they are not perturbative states: they are too heavy to form multi-particle bound states. We compute the one-loop determinant for gravitons in these orbifold backgrounds, which confirms that the orbifold states are Virasoro primaries. We compute the gravitational partition function including the sum over these orbifolds and find a finite, modular invariant result; this finiteness involves a delicate cancellation between the infinite tower of orbifold states and an infinite number of instantons associated with $PSL(2,{\mathbb Z})$ images.
Forward citations
Cited by 7 Pith papers
-
A solvable model of 3d quantum gravity
A solvable 3d quantum gravity model is defined by summing Virasoro TQFT copies over all topologies, shown to be dual to a 2d CFT ensemble and to exhibit semiclassical features such as cured negative density of states ...
-
Mind the crosscap: $\tau$-scaling in non-orientable gravity and time-reversal-invariant systems
Non-orientable topological gravity produces a resummed topological expansion whose late-time behavior matches the GOE universality class of random matrix theory for time-reversal invariant chaotic systems.
-
Wormholes as red herrings: reflection positivity and the reconstruction of unitary quantum field theories
Unitary QFTs are determined up to unitary isomorphism by closed-manifold partition functions; every reflection-positive partition function comes from a unitary QFT, so spatial wormholes do not break Hilbert-space fact...
-
What's the Matter with 3D Gravity?
Using worldline formalism and geometric quantization, the partition function for 3D gravity with matter on thermal AdS3 is computed via equivariant localization, reproducing the Wilson spool and conjecturing the all-o...
-
An observer's quantization of 3d de Sitter
Proposes an SL(2,Z) sum of Kerr-lens geometries in 3d dS gravity whose spectral density is computed via crosscap amplitudes in CLS ⊗ CLS, matching semi-classical predictions and reducing in a simple case to GΣ ⊗ GΣ on...
-
Spinning States and Unitarity in 3D Gravity
Spinning states scaled with central charge cancel negative densities in 3D gravity, reinterpreted as bulk defects or overspinning BTZ quotients of AdS3 that preserve the gap but exhibit causal pathologies.
-
Surgery and statistics in 3d gravity
Introduces RMT surgery to relate off-shell 3D gravity partition functions to CFT spectral statistics via Euclidean wormholes with four-punctured sphere and trumpet boundaries.
discussion (0)
Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.