Theory HEP Seminar

Information loss from partition functions at late times

Ethan Dyer

Stanford

The old information loss paradox asks how the thermal nature of black holes is consistent with a discrete unitary Hilbert space. The spectral form factor, a probe related to the analytic continuation of the thermal partition function, provides a sharp characterization of this tension. I will discuss recent computations of the spectral form factor, focusing on the case of AdS3/CFT2, and the implications for potential bulk mechanisms of information restoration. I will also discuss how properties of the spectral form factor may be useful in providing constraints on CFT data.