| Project Detail |
Our Universe is governed by what appear to be two opposing kinds of forces: those contained in the standard model of particle physics, which are well anchored in the realm of quantum field theory (the modern incarnation of quantum mechanics) and the force of gravity. At first glance, gravity does not seem to be different in nature from the remaining forces, those of the standard model. However, at a detailed level, the force of gravity evades conventional attempts to quantize it relying on the standard toolkit of quantum field theory.In the present proposal we describe a novel approach to the physics of quantum gravity, based on what is arguably the most universal phase of nature known to date: quantum chaos. We are proposing a research program that seeks to answer a deep and timely question, namelyShould gravity be understood not as a specific theory at all, but rather as an average over an ensemble of theoriesThis question has arisen in recent years in the context of lower-dimensional gravity theories and holography. This proposal puts its focus on the more urgent general question, of three dimensions and higher, where gravity behaves qualitatively differently and hence new ideas are required. We also undertake an investigation of more general spacetimes than those arising in holographic duality.The key insight enabling our proposed work is that chaos has the ability to make individual quantum systems behave like ensembles of Hamiltonians. Crucially however, quantum chaos leaves universal signatures, such as energy correlations, including in higher dimensional systems. This is, in a nutshell, the key idea that allows this proposal to attack higher dimensional gravity. We will pave the way by considering individual lower dimensional chaotic Hamiltonians and their dual gravitational descriptions, which then form the springboard, in order to extract chaotic correlations and the effective ensemble description of higher-dimensional systems, addressing the question posed at the start in gravity in three dimensions and above.We propose to explore and characterize quantum chaos in strongly correlated many body systems including higher-dimensional holographic field theories (Objective 1), and to map this phase onto bulk signatures of chaos, which encode the ultra-fine non-perturbative structure of black-hole microstates implied by quantum chaos (Objective 2). Together these objectives will allow us to answer the question as to whether ensemble averages in gravity are truly fundamental, or whether they are in fact merely an effective description of an underlying highly chaotic individual quantum system. |
