Physical Society Colloquium

Holography, Black Holes and Quantum Gravity

Alex Maloney

Department of Physics
McGill University

The holographic correspondence is a powerful tool to study basic questions in quantum gravity. It tells us that quantum gravity in a region of space-time is completely equivalent to a simple quantum mechanical theory in one less dimension. In many cases this correspondence can be made explicit. For example, the two dimensional Ising model appears to be dual to three dimensional general relativity with a certain value of the cosmological constant. This allows us to address basic questions involving the quantum mechanics of black holes and provides a calculable framework for the computation of the “wave function of the universe” in quantum cosmology.