Flat space gravity at finite cutoff
Abstract
We study the thermodynamics of Einstein gravity with vanishing cosmological constant subjected to conformal boundary conditions. Our focus is on comparing the series of subextensive terms to predictions from thermal effective field theory, with which we find agreement for the boundary theory on a spatial sphere, hyperbolic space, and flat space. We calculate the leading Wilson coefficients and observe that the first subextensive correction to the free energy is negative. This violates a conjectured bound on this coefficient in quantum field theory, which we interpret as a signal that gravity does not fully decouple in the putative boundary dual.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2409.07643,
title = {Flat space gravity at finite cutoff},
author = {Batoul Banihashemi and Edgar Shaghoulian and Sanjit Shashi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.07643},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
32 pages + appendices and references, 2 figures; v3: additional clarifications; matches published version