hep-th/9712130 CALT-68-2152 M-Theory as a Holographic Field Theory Petr Hoˇrava California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
[email protected] We suggest that M-theory could be non-perturbatively equivalent to a local quantum field theory. More precisely, we present a “renormalizable” gauge theory in eleven dimensions, and show that it exhibits various properties expected of quantum M-theory, most no- tably the holographic principle of ’t Hooft and Susskind. The theory also satisfies Mach’s principle: A macroscopically large space-time (and the inertia of low-energy excitations) is generated by a large number of “partons” in the microscopic theory. We argue that at low energies in large eleven dimensions, the theory should be effectively described by arXiv:hep-th/9712130 v2 10 Nov 1998 eleven-dimensional supergravity. This effective description breaks down at much lower energies than naively expected, precisely when the system saturates the Bekenstein bound on energy density. We show that the number of partons scales like the area of the surface surrounding the system, and discuss how this holographic reduction of degrees of freedom affects the cosmological constant problem. We propose the holographic field theory as a candidate for a covariant, non-perturbative formulation of quantum M-theory. December 1997 1. Introduction M-theory has emerged from our understanding of non-perturbative string dynamics, as a hypothetical quantum theory which has eleven-dimensional supergravity [1] as its low- energy limit, and is related to string theory via various dualities [2-4] (for an introduction and references, see e.g.