Flat space gravity at finite cutoff

TL;DR

This paper investigates the thermodynamics of flat space Einstein gravity with conformal boundary conditions, comparing subextensive terms to effective field theory predictions and revealing a violation of a quantum field theory bound.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed comparison of gravity thermodynamics with boundary effective field theory in flat space, highlighting non-decoupling effects.

Findings

Agreement of subextensive terms with effective field theory predictions

Leading Wilson coefficients calculated and analyzed

First subextensive correction to free energy is negative, violating a conjectured bound

Abstract

We study the thermodynamics of Einstein gravity with vanishing cosmological constant subjected to conformal boundary conditions. Our focus is on comparing the series of subextensive terms to predictions from thermal effective field theory, with which we find agreement for the boundary theory on a spatial sphere, hyperbolic space, and flat space. We calculate the leading Wilson coefficients and observe that the first subextensive correction to the free energy is negative. This violates a conjectured bound on this coefficient in quantum field theory, which we interpret as a signal that gravity does not fully decouple in the putative boundary dual.