Conformal Vacua and Entropy in de Sitter Space

TL;DR

This paper explores the dS/CFT correspondence in de Sitter space, analyzing various vacua, their boundary correlators, and the entropy of Kerr-dS_3 black holes, revealing vacuum dependence and matching microscopic entropy with horizon area.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of vacuum states in de Sitter space, their boundary correlators, and connects the boundary CFT entropy to the bulk Kerr-dS_3 horizon area.

Findings

Vacuum dependence of boundary correlators in dS/CFT.

In odd dimensions, in and out vacua coincide, indicating no particle production.

Microscopic entropy matches Bekenstein-Hawking entropy for Kerr-dS_3.

Abstract

The dS/CFT correspondence is illuminated through an analysis of massive scalar field theory in d-dimensional de Sitter space. We consider a one-parameter family of dS-invariant vacua related by Bogolyubov transformations and compute the corresponding Green functions. It is shown that none of these Green functions correspond to the one obtained by analytic continuation from AdS. Among this family of vacua are in (out) vacua which have no incoming (outgoing) particles on past (future) infinity. Surprisingly, it is shown that in odd spacetime dimensions the in and out vacua are the same, implying the absence of particle production for this state. The correlators of the boundary CFT, as defined by the dS/CFT correspondence, are shown to depend on the choice of vacuum state - the correlators with all points on past infinity vanish in the in vacuum. For dS_3 we argue that this bulk vacuum dependence of the correlators is dual to a deformation of the boundary CFT_2 by a specific marginal operator. It is also shown that Witten's non-standard de Sitter inner product (slightly modified) reduces to the standard inner product of the boundary field theory. Next we consider a scalar field in the Kerr-dS_3 Euclidean vacuum. A density matrix is constructed by tracing out over modes which are causally inaccessible to a single geodesic observer. This is shown to be a thermal state at the Kerr-dS_3 temperature and angular potential. It is further shown that, assuming Cardy's formula, the microscopic entropy of such a thermal state in the boundary CFT precisely equals the Bekenstein-Hawking value of one quarter the area of the Kerr-dS_3 horizon.