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Title: Baby Universes, Holography, and the Swampland
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. We further comment on the possible exceptions in d ≤ 3 for this hypothesis and the role of an ensemble in holographic theories in the context of theories of quantum gravity in d = 2 (such as JT gravity and possible cousins in d = 3), which we argue 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.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1719924
PAR ID:
10181586
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
ArXivorg
ISSN:
2331-8422
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1 - 25
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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