Black hole thermodynamics from simulations of lattice Yang-Mills theory

TL;DR

This paper uses lattice simulations of supersymmetric Yang-Mills quantum mechanics to explore the thermodynamics of black holes via gauge/gravity duality, confirming theoretical predictions at low temperatures.

Contribution

It provides the first lattice simulation results for 16 supercharge SU(N) Yang-Mills quantum mechanics, supporting the duality with IIA black holes at low temperatures.

Findings

Results are consistent with black hole predictions at low temperatures.

Observes 't Hooft scaling across simulated regimes.

Smooth behavior observed in the intermediate temperature range.

Abstract

We report on lattice simulations of 16 supercharge SU(N) Yang-Mills quantum mechanics in the 't Hooft limit. Maldacena duality conjectures that in this limit the theory is dual to IIA string theory, and in particular that the behavior of the thermal theory at low temperature is equivalent to that of certain black holes in IIA supergravity. Our simulations probe the low temperature regime for N <= 5 and the intermediate and high temperature regimes for N <= 12. We observe 't Hooft scaling and at low temperatures our results are consistent with the dual black hole prediction. The intermediate temperature range is dual to the Horowitz-Polchinski correspondence region, and our results are consistent with smooth behavior there. We include the Pfaffian phase arising from the fermions in our calculations where appropriate.