Theory Group Special Seminar, 29 November 2016
Dr. Scott Aaronson, University
of Texas, Computer Science
AdS/CFT & Computational Complexity
abstract
This talk will explore recent connections between computational
complexity and the AdS/CFT correspondence. It's meant as a
continuation of the speaker's Geometry Seminar on the black-hole
firewall problem, though the two talks stand independently and neither
is a prerequisite for the other.
A few years ago, Susskind and others proposed that, within the context
of the AdS/CFT correspondence, the CFT dual of certain geometric
features -- such as the volume of an expanding wormhole -- is the
quantum circuit complexity of the CFT state (that is, the minimum
number of elementary unitary transformations needed to prepare the
state from some simple initial state). I'll present a recent joint
result of myself and Susskind, which shows that, assuming standard
hypotheses in theoretical computer science (for example: "PSPACE is
not in PP/poly"), the circuit complexity of the CFT state indeed
behaves as it would need to for this striking proposal to work. I'll
explain some requisite background in classical and quantum computing
theory during the talk.