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String Theory Demystified

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CHAPTER 15<br />

The Holographic<br />

Principle and AdS/CFT<br />

Correspondence<br />

In this chapter we will touch on one of the most interesting ideas to come out of the<br />

study of quantum gravity and string theory in particular: the holographic principle.<br />

This is an idea closely related to entropy, so we present it here after we have<br />

completed our discussion of black holes and entropy in the last chapter. The<br />

holographic principle appears to be a quite general feature of quantum gravity, but<br />

we discuss it in the context of string theory. Our discussion largely follows that of<br />

Susskind and Witten. 1 Our focus will be on showing how the holographic principle<br />

leads to an entropy bound of the type we found for black holes.<br />

1 The topics discussed here are quite advanced, so our discussion will be more qualitative and heuristic.<br />

For a detailed exposition you may consult L. Susskind and E. Witten, “The Holographic Bound in Antide<br />

Sitter Space,” http://xxx.lanl.gove/abs/hep-th/9805114; and J. M. Maldacena, “The Large N Limit of<br />

Superconformal Field Theories and Super Gravity,” Adv. Theor. Math. Phys. 2:231–252, 1998.<br />

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