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2–6 Sept 2024
University of Southampton
Europe/London timezone

On the quantum mechanics of old black holes

5 Sept 2024, 16:00
30m
B46/LTA (University of Southampton)

B46/LTA

University of Southampton

Plenary talk Plenary session

Speaker

Mark Mezei (University of Oxford)

Description

The Euclidean gravitational path integral involves a sum over topologies. In this talk, we discuss how topology change can be incorporated into the (Lorentzian) Hilbert space description of quantum gravity. Our proposal leaves the semiclassical space of states intact, but modifies the inner product between them giving rise to a plethora of null states. To illustrate the use of this formalism, we construct the black hole interior volume operator in two-dimensional Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity, compute its expectation value at late times, and discuss its relation to holographic complexity.

Link to publication (if applicable)

https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.08696

Author

Mark Mezei (University of Oxford)

Presentation materials