HET Brown Bag Seminar | Quantum Gravity and the Ising Model |Speaker: Tom Hartman (IAS)

Speaker: Tom Hartman (IAS)

Pure gravity in three dimensions, if it exists as a quantum theory, is a simple toy model for quantum gravity. I will discuss features of the theory with a negative cosmological constant at strong coupling, and describe how a simple holographic principle is built into the Einstein Hamiltonian. An exact computation of the partition function by a sum over geometries suggests that, for a particular choice of Newton's constant, it is holographically dual to the 2d Ising model. Similarly, higher spin generalizations of 3d gravity are holographically dual to other known CFTs including the Potts model.