Classical and Quantum Aspects of Black Holes, Horizons and Asymptotic Symmetries

黑洞、视界和渐近对称性的经典和量子方面

• 批准号: 1606536
• 负责人: Andrew Strominger
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: Harvard University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-08-01 至 2017-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1606536&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Classical; Quantum; Aspects; Black; Holes

Symmetries play a critical role in physics and astronomy. They are usually associated with conserved quantities that allow for a clearer picture of a physical system. Of particular interest to the research supported by this award are symmetries present at the horizon of black holes. These have potential implications for gravitational scattering experiments, gravitational memory measurements, astronomical measurements of spinning black holes and quantum black hole information. The objective of this project is to further investigate these symmetries and the role that they play in physical systems. In the last few years, Strominger and group have shown that the infinitely many symmetries at light-like infinity form one part of an exact triangular equivalence of three phenomena which recur ubiquitously across a wide variety of physical systems and have been separately studied for a half century -- the other two phenomena being memory and soft theorems. Soft theorems characterize the low energy behavior of physical systems and can be derived as the `Ward identities' of the infinite number of symmetries. The third corner -- memory -- turns out to be simply the Fourier transform of the soft theorems. This very simple triangular equivalence occurs in various instances in physics: QED, Yang-Mills theory, gravity, in any number of dimensions, with or without supersymmetry, with leading, subleading or subsubleading soft theorems in one corner. While several triangles have been filled out, most remain incomplete. Each instance of the triangle has its own special and fascinating features, which will be investigated in this project. More recently, the triangular structure was found to have profound implications for the famous black hole information puzzle, which will also be pursued. In another direction, general relativity implies that the dynamics of the near horizon region of extreme Kerr is governed by an infinite-dimensional emergent conformal symmetry. Precision black hole spectroscopy has now advanced to the stage where astronomers are beginning to observe the regions of spacetime governed by this conformal symmetry. This award will support a systematic exploration of potential observational consequences of the conformal symmetry.

对称性在物理学和天文学中起着至关重要的作用。它们通常与守恒量相关，可以更清晰地了解物理系统。该奖项支持的研究特别感兴趣的是黑洞视界中存在的对称性。这些对引力散射实验、引力记忆测量、旋转黑洞的天文测量和量子黑洞信息具有潜在的影响。该项目的目标是进一步研究这些对称性及其在物理系统中发挥的作用。在过去的几年里，斯特罗明格和他的团队已经证明，类光无穷远处的无限多个对称性形成了三种现象的精确三角形等价的一部分，这三种现象在各种物理系统中普遍存在，并且已经被单独研究了半年。世纪——另外两种现象是记忆和软定理。软定理描述了物理系统的低能量行为，并且可以导出为无限数量对称性的“沃德恒等式”。第三个角——记忆——结果只是软定理的傅里叶变换。这种非常简单的三角形等价出现在物理学中的各种实例中：QED、杨-米尔斯理论、引力、任意数量的维度、有或没有超对称性、在一个角落有主导、次主导或次次主导软定理。虽然几个三角形已被填充，但大多数仍不完整。三角形的每个实例都有其独特且令人着迷的特征，这些特征将在本项目中进行研究。最近，人们发现三角形结构对著名的黑洞信息谜题具有深远的影响，这也将被研究。在另一个方向上，广义相对论意味着极端克尔的近地平线区域的动力学是由无限维的涌现共形对称性控制的。精密黑洞光谱现已发展到天文学家开始观察受这种共形对称性控制的时空区域的阶段。该奖项将支持对共形对称性潜在观测结果的系统探索。