We study the relation between the dilaton action and sigma models for the Goldstone bosons of the spontaneous breaking of the conformal group. We argue that the relation requires that the sigma model is diffeomorphism invariant. The origin of the WZW terms for the dilaton is clarified and it is shown that in this approach the dilaton WZW term is necessarily accompanied by a Weyl invariant term proposed before from holographic considerations.
We proceed to study a (1+1)-dimensional dilaton gravity system with a hyperbolic dilaton potential. Introducing a couple of new variables leads to two copies of Liouville equations with two constraint conditions. In particular, in conformal gauge, the constraints can be expressed with Schwarzian derivatives. We revisit the vacuum solutions in light of the new variables and reveal its dipole-like structure. Then we present a time-dependent solution which describes formation of a black hole with a pulse. Finally, the black hole thermodynamics is considered by taking account of conformal matters from two points of view: 1) the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy and 2) the boundary stress tensor. The former result agrees with the latter one with a certain counter-term.
The simple current construction of orientifolds based on rational conformal field theories is reviewed. When applied to SO(16) level 1, one can describe all ten-dimensional orientifolds in a unified framework.
We study the information quantities, including the holographic entanglement entropy (HEE), mutual information (MI) and entanglement of purification (EoP), over Gubser-Rocha model. The remarkable property of this model is the zero entropy density at ground state, in term of which we expect to extract novel, even singular informational properties in zero temperature limit. Surprisedly, we do not observe any singular behavior of entanglement-related physical quantities under the zero temperature limit. Nevertheless, we find a peculiar property from Gubser-Rocha model that in low temperature region, the HEE decreases with the increase of temperature, which is contrary to that in most holographic models. We argue that this novel phenomenon is brought by the singular property of the zero temperature limit, of which the analytical verification is present. In addition, we also compare the features of the information quantities in Gubser-Rocha model with those in Reissner-Nordstrom Anti-de Sitter (RN-AdS) black hole model. It is shown that the HEE and MI of Gubser-Rocha model are always larger than those of RN-AdS model, while the EoP behaves in an opposite way. Our results indicate that MI and EoP could have different abilities in describing mixed state entanglement.
We discuss the holographic description of Narain $U(1)^ctimes U(1)^c$ conformal field theories, and their potential similarity to conventional weakly coupled gravity in the bulk, in the sense that the effective IR bulk description includes $U(1)$ gravity amended with additional light degrees of freedom. Starting from this picture, we formulate the hypothesis that in the large central charge limit the density of states of any Narain theory is bounded by below by the density of states of $U(1)$ gravity. This immediately implies that the maximal value of the spectral gap for primary fields is $Delta_1=c/(2pi e)$. To test the self-consistency of this proposal, we study its implications using chiral lattice CFTs and CFTs based on quantum stabilizer codes. First we notice that the conjecture yields a new bound on quantum stabilizer codes, which is compatible with previously known bounds in the literature. We proceed to discuss the variance of the density of states, which for consistency must be vanishingly small in the large-$c$ limit. We consider ensembles of code and chiral theories and show that in both cases the density variance is exponentially small in the central charge.
We discuss aspects of magnetically charged black holes in the Standard Model. For a range of charges, we argue that the electroweak symmetry is restored in the near horizon region. The extent of this phase can be macroscopic. If $Q$ is the integer magnetic charge, the fermions lead to order $Q$ massless two dimensional fermions moving along the magnetic field lines. These greatly enhance Hawking radiation effects.