Negative Energy, Superluminosity and Holography

TL;DR

This paper explores the paradoxical phenomena of negative energy and superluminal effects in holographic dualities, proposing that hidden degrees of freedom called precursors explain these effects within quantum field theory.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of precursors as hidden degrees of freedom in SYM theory that account for superluminal and negative energy phenomena in holography, resolving apparent paradoxes.

Findings

Negative energy and superluminal oscillations can occur in quantum field theory.

Precursors are hidden degrees of freedom storing information without local energy.

These effects are consistent with quantum field theory and can be modeled in free fields.

Abstract

The holographic connection between large $N$ Super Yang Mills theory and gravity in anti deSitter space requires unfamiliar behavior of the SYM theory in the limit that the curvature of the AdS geometry becomes small. The paradoxical behavior includes superluminal oscillations and negative energy density. These effects typically occur in the SYM description of events which take place far from the boundary of AdS when the signal from the event arrives at the boundary. The paradoxes can be resolved by assuming a very rich collection of hidden degrees of freedom of the SYM theory which store information but give rise to no local energy density. These degrees of freedom, called precursors, are needed to make possible sudden apparently acausal energy momentum flows. Such behavior would be impossible in classical field theory as a consequence of the positivity of the energy density. However we show that these effects are not only allowed in quantum field theory but that we can model them in free quantum field theory.