Large N phases, gravitational instantons, and the nuts and bolts of AdS holography - art. no. 064010

Recent results in the literature concerning holography indicate that the th ermodynamics of quantum gravity (at least with a negative cosmological cons tant) can be modeled by the large N thermodynamics of quantum field theory. We emphasize that this suggests a completely unitary evolution of processe s in quantum gravity, including black hole formation and decay, and even mo re extreme examples involving topology change. As concrete examples which s how that this correspondence holds even when the space-time is only locally asymptotically AdS, we compute the thermodynamical phase structure of the AdS-Taub-NUT and AdS-Taub-bolt spacetimes, and compare them to a (2 + 1)-di mensional conformal field theory (at large N) compactified on a squashed th ree-sphere and on the twisted plane. [S0556-2821(99)06302-X].