Causal connectability between quantum systems and the black hole interior in holographic duality

Abstract

In holographic duality an eternal anti-de Sitter black hole is described by two copies of the boundary conformal field theory in the thermal field double state. This identification has many puzzles, including the boundary descriptions of the event horizons, the interiors of the black hole, and the singularities. Compounding these mysteries is the fact that, while there is no interaction between the conformal field theories, observers from them can fall into the black hole and interact. We address these issues in this paper. In particular, we (i) present a boundary formulation of a class of in-falling bulk observers; (ii) present an argument that a sharp bulk event horizon can only emerge in the infinite N limit of the boundary theory; (iii) give an explicit construction in the boundary theory of an evolution operator for a bulk in-falling observer, making manifest the boundary emergence of the black hole horizons, the interiors, and the associated causal structure. A byproduct is a concept called causal connectability, which is a criterion for any two quantum systems (which do not need to have a known gravity dual) to have an emergent sharp horizon structure.