Holographic Description of AdS Cosmologies

TL;DR

This paper explores the holographic dual of AdS cosmologies with singularities, revealing that such singularities correspond to hairy black holes in the dual theory, and suggests the big bang as a rare fluctuation rather than a bounce.

Contribution

It provides a holographic description of cosmological singularities in AdS space and interprets them as hairy black holes in the dual field theory, offering new insights into quantum cosmology.

Findings

Cosmological singularities map to hairy black holes in dual theory

No evidence of a bounce from big crunch to big bang in the dual description

Big bang appears as a rare fluctuation in quantum gravity state

Abstract

To gain insight in the quantum nature of the big bang, we study the dual field theory description of asymptotically anti-de Sitter solutions of supergravity that have cosmological singularities. The dual theories do not appear to have a stable ground state. One regularization of the theory causes the cosmological singularities in the bulk to turn into giant black holes with scalar hair. We interpret these hairy black holes in the dual field theory and use them to compute a finite temperature effective potential. In our study of the field theory evolution, we find no evidence for a "bounce" from a big crunch to a big bang. Instead, it appears that the big bang is a rare fluctuation from a generic equilibrium quantum gravity state.