Undecidability in spacetime geometry via the AdS/CFT correspondence
Undecidability, a hallmark of Gödel incompleteness theorems, has recently emerged in quantum many-body physics through the spectral gap problem. We demonstrate how this logical limitation can be holographically transmitted to a class of gravitational theories via the AdS/CFT correspondence. By embedding a translationally invariant spin Hamiltonian with undecidable gap status into a large-N gauge theory, we generate an anti–de Sitter (AdS) dual in which the selection of dominant bulk saddle (Poincaré AdS or AdS soliton) is itself undecidable. Consequently, under standard semiclassical holographic assumptions, even determining which smooth spacetime geometry emerges from quantum gravity can be beyond the limits of computability.
Authors
- Francesco Marino (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1532-9584)
- Lawrence M. Krauss (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6917-2308)
- Arshid Shabir (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7545-4128)
- Anonymous
- Mir Faizal
Institutions
- University of British Columbia (CA)
- Durham University (GB)
- Canadian Quantum Research Center (CA)
- National Institute of Optics (IT)
- Asia School of Business (MY)
- Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Firenze (IT)
- The Origins Project Foundation (US)
- University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus (CA)
- Jamia Millia Islamia (IN)
- Okanagan University College (CA)
- Hasselt University (BE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physical review. D/Physical review. D.
- Published
- 2026-01-09
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/zqgf-6qp7
- Primary Topic
- Black Holes and Theoretical Physics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00