http://inspirehep.net/record/499969/files/arXiv:hep-th_9905111.pdf

Large N Field Theories, String Theory and Gravity

QUANTUM gravitational effects are usually ignored in calculations of the formation and evolution of black holes. The justification for this is that the radius of curvature of space-time outside the event horizon is very large compared to the Planck length (Għ/c3)1/2 ≈ 10−33 cm, the length scale on which quantum fluctuations of the metric are expected to be of order unity. This means that the energy density of particles created by the gravitational field is small compared to the space-time curvature. Even though quantum effects may be small locally, they may still, however, add up to produce a significant effect over the lifetime of the Universe ≈ 1017 s which is very long compared to the Planck time ≈ 10−43 s. The purpose of this letter is to show that this indeed may be the case: it seems that any black hole will create and emit particles such as neutrinos or photons at just the rate that one would expect if the black hole was a body with a temperature of (κ/2π) (ħ/2k) ≈ 10−6 (M/M)K where κ is the surface gravity of the black hole1. As a black hole emits this thermal radiation one would expect it to lose mass. This in turn would increase the surface gravity and so increase the rate of emission. The black hole would therefore have a finite life of the order of 1071 (M/M)−3 s. For a black hole of solar mass this is much longer than the age of the Universe. There might, however, be much smaller black holes which were formed by fluctuations in the early Universe2. Any such black hole of mass less than 1015 g would have evaporated by now. Near the end of its life the rate of emission would be very high and about 1030 erg would be released in the last 0.1 s. This is a fairly small explosion by astronomical standards but it is equivalent to about 1 million 1 Mton hydrogen bombs. It is often said that nothing can escape from a black hole. But in 1974, Stephen Hawking realized that, owing to quantum effects, black holes should emit particles with a thermal distribution of energies — as if the black hole had a temperature inversely proportional to its mass. In addition to putting black-hole thermodynamics on a firmer footing, this discovery led Hawking to postulate 'black hole explosions', as primordial black holes end their lives in an accelerating release of energy.

Black Hole Explosions

This article reviews the generalization of field theory to space-time with noncommuting coordinates, starting with the basics and covering most of the active directions of research. Such theories are now known to emerge from limits of M theory and string theory and to describe quantum Hall states. In the last few years they have been studied intensively, and many qualitatively new phenomena have been discovered, on both the classical and the quantum level.

Noncommutative field theory

We explain how the string spectrum in flat space and pp-waves arises from the large-N limit, at fixed g2YM, of U(N) = 4 super Yang Mills. We reproduce the spectrum by summing a subset of the planar Feynman diagrams. We give a heuristic argument for why we can neglect other diagrams. We also discuss some other aspects of pp-waves and we present a matrix model associated to the DLCQ description of the maximally supersymmetric eleven dimensional pp-waves.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1126-6708/2002/04/013/pdf

Strings in flat space and pp waves from Script N = 4 Super Yang Mills

These notes are loosely based on lectures given at the CERN Winter School on Supergravity, Strings and Gauge theories, February 2009, and at the IPM String School in Tehran, April 2009. I have focused on a few concrete topics and also on addressing questions that have arisen repeatedly. Background condensed matter physics material is included as motivation and easy reference for the high energy physics community. The discussion of holographic techniques progresses from equilibrium, to transport and to superconductivity.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0264-9381/26/22/224002/pdf

Lectures on holographic methods for condensed matter physics

This is a very brief summary of the parallel presentations made in the D2 session of GR20. It also contains a short report on the joint D1, D2, D4 session on the quantum mechanics of black hole evaporation.

Proceedings of the D2 parallel session on Strings, Branes and M-Theory

Stephen Hawking, born 8 January 1942, at Oxford in an academic family, had an early aptitude and inclination towards science. He studied physics and chemistry at university in Oxford, though he seems not to have excelled as a student, instead spending much of his time at the college boat club! He went to Cambridge for his Ph D hoping to study cosmology with Fred Hoyle, but instead was assigned to Dennis Sciama who proved to be an important influence on him. It was at this time that Hawking was diagnosed with ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease – a degenerative motor neuronal disorder. Though he was given only a couple of years to live at age 22 or so, his disease progressed slower than predicted.

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018)

We give a brief survey of the attempts to understand the quantum dynamics of general relativity through the lens of quantum field theory, which has been successfully applied to the other fundamental interactions. This approach began by naively quantizing spin two massless particles but quickly ran into difficulties when considering quantum corrections to the interacting theory. We will describe how the early incarnations of string theory successfully addressed these problems. Then we go on to sketch how one has been able to go beyond this 'perturbative' picture by giving a tight microscopic description of black hole thermodynamics. This in turn has led to the much more subtle holographic description of the quantum dynamics of a large class of spacetimes which has been one of the primary engines of theoretical developments in the last couple of decades.

String Theory and the Conundrums of Quantum Gravity

The series of perturbative fluctuations around a multi-instanton contribution to a specific class of correlation functions of supercurrents in $\cal N=4$ supersymmetric SU(N) Yang-Mills theory is examined in the light of the AdS/CFT correspondence. Subject to certain plausible assumptions, we argue that a given term in the 1/N expansion in such a background receives only a finite number of perturbative corrections in the 't Hooft limit. Such instanton non-renormalisation theorems would explain, for example, the exact agreement of certain weak coupling Yang-Mills instanton calculations with the strong coupling predictions arising from D-instanton effects in string theory amplitudes. These non-renormalisation theorems essentially follow from the assumption of a well defined derivative $(\alpha^{\prime})$ expansion in the string theory dual of the Yang-Mills theory.

Instantons and Non-renormalisation in AdS/CFT

Scattering of zero branes off the fixed point in $R^8/Z_2$, as described by a super-quantum mechanics with eight supercharges, displays some novel effects relevant to Matrix theory in non-compact backgrounds. The leading long distance behaviour of the moduli space metric receives no correction at one loop in Matrix theory, but does receive a correction at two loops. There are no contributions at higher loops. We explicitly calculate the two-loop term, finding a non-zero result. We find a discrepancy with M(atrix)-theory. Although the result has the right dependence on $v$ and $b$ for the scattering of zero branes off the fixed point the factors of $N$ do not match. We also discuss scattering in the orbifolds, $R^5/Z_2$ and $R^9/Z_2$ where we find the predicted fractional charges.

Rajesh Gopakumar

Papers

Proceedings of the D2 parallel session on Strings, Branes and M-Theory

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018)

String Theory and the Conundrums of Quantum Gravity

Instantons and Non-renormalisation in AdS/CFT

Higher Loop Effects in M(atrix) Orbifolds