Chern-Simons Gravity, Wilson Lines and Large N Dual Gauge Theories

A five-dimensional Chern-Simons gravity theory based on the anti-de Sitter group SO(4,2) is argued to be a useful model in which to understand the details of holography and the relationship between generally covariant and dual local quantum field theories. Defined on a manifold with boundary, conformal geometry arises naturally as a gauge invariance preserving boundary condition. By matching thermodynamic quantities for a particular background geometry, the dimensionless coupling constant of the Chern-Simons theory is directly related to the number of fields in a putative dual theory at high temperature. As a consistency check, the semiclassical factorization of Wilson line observables in the gravity theory is shown to induce a factorization in dual theory observables as expected by general arguments of large N gauge theory.