The double cone geometry is stable to brane nucleation

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the double cone geometry in gauge/gravity duality is stable against brane nucleation, supporting its role in modeling quantum chaos features like the spectral form factor ramp.

Contribution

It shows the stability of the double cone geometry to brane nucleation in higher-dimensional theories, extending previous two-dimensional results and implications for the spectral form factor.

Findings

Double cone geometry is stable to brane nucleation.

Supports the double cone's dominance in the spectral form factor ramp.

Implications for AdS/CFT factorization problem.

Abstract

In gauge/gravity duality, the bulk double cone geometry has been argued to account for a key feature of the spectral form factor known as the ramp. This feature is deeply associated with quantum chaos in the dual field theory. The connection with the ramp has been demonstrated in detail for two-dimensional theories of bulk gravity, but it appears natural in higher dimensions as well. In a general bulk theory the double cone might thus be expected to dominate the semiclassical bulk path integral for the boundary spectral form factor in the ramp regime. While other known spacetime wormholes have been shown to be unstable to brane nucleation when they dominate over known disconnected (factorizing) solutions, we argue that the double cone is stable to semiclassical brane nucleation at the probe-brane level in a variety of string- and M-theory settings. Possible implications for the AdS/CFT factorization problem are briefly discussed.