Microcanonical path integrals and the holography of small black hole interiors

Abstract

We use a microcanonical path integral closely related to that introduced by Brown and York in 1992 to add new entries to the AdS/CFT dictionary concerning the interiors of small black holes. Stationary points of such path integrals are also stationary points of more standard canonical-type path integrals with fixed boundary metric, but the condition for dominance is now maximizing Hubeny-Rangamani-Takayanagi entropy at fixed energy. As a result, such path integrals can bring to the fore saddles that fail to dominate in more familiar contexts. We use this feature to argue that the standard Kruskal-like two-sided extension of small AdS black holes with energy E0 is dual to a microcanonical version of the thermofield double state for AdS black holes that maximize the microcanonical bulk entropy at this energy. We also comment on entanglement in such states and on quantum effects that become large when the energy-width of the microcanonical ensemble is sufficiently small.