M theory as a holographic field theory
- Creators
- Hořava, Petr
Abstract
We suggest that M theory could be nonperturbatively equivalent to a local quantum field theory. More precisely, we present a "renormalizable" gauge theory in eleven dimensions, and show that it exhibits various properties expected of quantum M theory, most notably the holographic principle of 't Hooft and Susskind. The theory also satisfies Mach's principle: A macroscopically large space-time (and the inertia of low-energy excitations) is generated by a large number of "partons" in the microscopic theory. We argue that at low energies in large eleven dimensions, the theory should be effectively described by eleven-dimensional supergravity. This effective description breaks down at much lower energies than naively expected, precisely when the system saturates the Bekenstein bound on energy density. We show that the number of partons scales like the area of the surface surrounding the system, and discuss how this holographic reduction of degrees of freedom affects the cosmological constant problem. We propose the holographic field theory as a candidate for a covariant, nonperturbative formulation of quantum M theory.
Additional Information
©1999 The American Physical Society. Received 15 December 1997; published 26 January 1999. I wish to thank Tom Banks, Itzhak Bars, Eric Gimon, Per Kraus, Christof Schmidhuber, John Schwarz, Lenny Susskind and Edward Witten for useful discussions at various stages of this work. This work has been supported by a Sherman Fairchild Prize Fellowship, and by DOE grant DE-FG03-92-ER 40701. Preprint: arXiv:hep-th/9712130 v2 10 Nov 1998; CALT-68-2152Files
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 5346
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:HORprd99
- Created
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2006-10-12Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-08Created from EPrint's last_modified field