2014/04/30 by Netta Engelhardt, Thomas Hertog, Gary T. Horowitz · 55 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Gravitational singularity #Holography #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #Statistical physics #Theoretical physics #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · open access · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.113.121602
published in Physical Review Letters 113(12), 121602 (American Physical Society) · 5 pages, 3 figures; v3: journal version, minor typos corrected, new figure added
openalex publication_date 2014/09/19 · arxiv created 2014/11/19 · arxiv updated 2014/11/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
To gain insight into the quantum nature of cosmological singularities, we study anisotropic Kasner solutions in gauge-gravity duality. The dual description of the bulk evolution towards the singularity involves N=4 super Yang-Mills theory on the expanding branch of deformed de Sitter space and is well defined. We compute two-point correlators of Yang-Mills operators of large dimensions using spacelike geodesics anchored on the boundary. The correlators show a strong signature of the singularity around horizon scales and decay at large boundary separation at different rates in different directions. More generally, the boundary evolution exhibits a process of particle creation similar to that in inflation. This leads us to conjecture that information on the quantum nature of cosmological singularities is encoded in long-wavelength features of the boundary wave function.