2007/10/05 by Leonard Susskind, Susskind, Leonard · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0710.1129
69 pages, 15 figures
arxiv created 2007/10/05 · openalex publication_date 2007/10/05 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
If the observable universe really is a hologram, then of what sort? Is it rich enough to keep track of an eternally inflating multiverse? What physical and mathematical principles underlie it? Is the hologram a lower dimensional quantum field theory, and if so, how many dimensions are explicit, and how many "emerge?" Does the Holographic description provide clues for defining a probability measure on the Landscape? The purpose of this lecture is first, to briefly review a proposal for a holographic cosmology by Freivogel, Sekino, Susskind, and Yeh (FSSY), and then to develop a physical interpretation in terms of a "Cosmic Census Taker:" an idea introduced in reference [1]. The mathematical structure--a hybrid of the Wheeler DeWitt formalism and holography--is a boundary "Liouville" field theory, whose UV/IR duality is closely related to the time evolution of the Census Taker's observations. That time evolution is represented by the renormalization-group flow of the Liouville theory. Although quite general, the Census Taker idea was originally introduced in \citeshenker, for the purpose of counting bubbles that collide with the Census Taker's bubble. The "Persistence of Memory" phenomenon discovered by Garriga, Guth, and Vilenkin, has a natural RG interpretation, as does slow roll inflation. The RG flow and the related C-theorem are closely connected with generalized entropy bounds.