Quantum Gravity in 2 Dimensions and the Conservation of Information

Barry McFarland will lead the session.
Recent proofs that information escapes in Hawing Radiation used a simple toy model to base their arguments from. This toy model goes by the name of JT Gravity (Jakiw-Teitelboim Gravity). This is a model of 2D gravity which can be unambiguously quantized, since gravitons in this theory have no dynamical degrees of freedom. The model is tractable, and has some key features which are meant to carry over into a higher dimensional theory of quantum gravity.

This talk will be more technical than my previous talks. There is no way around it if one is interested in more than a qualitative picture of why there has been such a fuss about the (claim about) Information Paradox having been solved. I will discuss the model, its action and quantization. Then I will mention what the SYK model is, and how the two models were combined into the holographic proof that information escapes from an evaporating Black Hole.

As usual, there will be a discussion afterwards of the merits of these claims based upon the arguments presented.

For the interested reader, here are some good papers to read:

The Hilbert Space Tensor Factorization Problem and JT Gravity
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.01081.pdf

On 2-Dimensional Gravity
https://physics.princeton.edu//archives/theses/lib/upload/Iliesiu_thesis.pdf:

AdS2 Holography and the SYK Model
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1711.08482.pdf