Negative energy, superluminosity, and holography - art. no. 084006.

The holographic connection between large N super Yang-Mills (SYM) theory an d gravity in anti-de Sitter (AdS) space requires unfamiliar behavior of the SYM theory in the limit that the curvature of the AdS geometry becomes sma ll. The paradoxical behavior includes superluminal oscillations and negativ e energy density. These effects typically occur in the SYM description of e vents which take place far from the boundary of AdS when the signal from th e event arrives at the boundary. The paradoxes can be resolved by assuming a very rich collection of hidden degrees of freedom of the SYM theory which store information but give rise to no local energy density. These degrees of freedom, called precursors, are needed to make possible sudden apparentl y acausal energy momentum flows, Such behavior would be impossible in class ical field theory as a consequence of the positivity of the energy density. However we show that these effects are not only allowed in quantum field t heory but that we can model them in free quantum field theory. [S0556-2821( 99)06616-3].