1:30 pm MCP 201
Two-dimensional gravity, gauge fields and the statistical mechanics of near-extremal black holes
Victor-luca Iliesiu, Princeton University
The low-energy behavior of near-extremal black holes can be understood from the near-horizon AdS_2 region. In turn, this region is effectively described by using Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity coupled to Yang-Mills theory. We show that such a two-dimensional model of gravity coupled to gauge fields is soluble for an arbitrary choice of gauge group and gauge couplings. Specifically, we determine the partition function of the theory on two-dimensional surfaces of arbitrary genus and with an arbitrary number of boundaries. When solely focusing on the contribution from surfaces with disk topology, we show that the gravitational gauge theory is described by the Schwarzian theory coupled to a particle moving on the gauge group manifold. Such a theory is expected to arise as the low energy limit of SYK-like models with a global symmetry. When considering the contribution from all topologies, we show that the theory is described by a novel random matrix ensemble. Finally, we compute the expectation value of various line operators in the gravitational gauge theory and describe their relationship to near-extremal black hole observables.