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Geometric Surprises in the Python's Lunch Conjecture
by Gurbir Arora, Matthew Headrick, Albion Lawrence, Martin Sasieta, Connor Wolfe
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Submission summary
| Authors (as registered SciPost users): | Martin Sasieta |
| Submission information | |
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| Preprint Link: | scipost_202405_00014v1 (pdf) |
| Date accepted: | 2024-05-20 |
| Date submitted: | 2024-05-10 15:22 |
| Submitted by: | Sasieta, Martin |
| Submitted to: | SciPost Physics |
| Ontological classification | |
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| Academic field: | Physics |
| Specialties: |
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| Approach: | Theoretical |
Abstract
A bulge surface, on a time reflection-symmetric Cauchy slice of a holographic spacetime, is a non-minimal extremal surface that occurs between two locally minimal surfaces homologous to a given boundary region. According to the python's lunch conjecture of Brown et al., the bulge's area controls the complexity of bulk reconstruction, in the sense of the amount of post-selection that needs to be overcome for the reconstruction of the entanglement wedge beyond the outermost extremal surface. We study the geometry of bulges in a variety of classical spacetimes, and discover a number of surprising features that distinguish them from more familiar extremal surfaces such as Ryu-Takayanagi surfaces: they spontaneously break spatial isometries, both continuous and discrete; they are sensitive to the choice of boundary infrared regulator; they can self-intersect; and they probe entanglement shadows, orbifold singularities, and compact spaces such as the sphere in AdS$_p\times S^q$. These features imply, according to the python's lunch conjecture, novel qualitative differences between complexity and entanglement in the holographic context. We also find, surprisingly, that extended black brane interiors have a non-extensive complexity; similarly, for multi-boundary wormhole states, the complexity pleateaus after a certain number of boundaries have been included.
Author indications on fulfilling journal expectations
- Provide a novel and synergetic link between different research areas.
- Open a new pathway in an existing or a new research direction, with clear potential for multi-pronged follow-up work
- Detail a groundbreaking theoretical/experimental/computational discovery
- Present a breakthrough on a previously-identified and long-standing research stumbling block
Author comments upon resubmission
List of changes
Modified sentence in the introduction (in the third paragraph of page 3) . Corrected a typo in eq. (3.14).
Published as SciPost Phys. 16, 152 (2024)