Moving interfaces and two-dimensional black holes

Abstract

Abstract Conformal field theories can exchange energy through a boundary interface. Imposing conformal boundary conditions for static interfaces implies energy conservation at the interface. Recently, the reflective and transmittive properties of such static conformal interfaces have been studied in two dimensions by scattering matter at the interface impurity. In this note, we generalize this to the case of dynamic interfaces. Motivated by the connections between the moving mirror and the black hole, we choose a particular profile for the dynamical interface. We show that a part of the total energy of each side will be lost in the interface. In other words, a time-dependent interface can accumulate or absorb energy. While, in general, the interface follows a time-like trajectory, one can take a particular limit of a profile parameter(β), such that the interface approaches a null line asymptotically(β → 0). In this limit, we show that for a class of boundary conditions, the interface behaves like a semipermeable membrane - it behaves like a (partially) reflecting mirror from one side and is (partially) transparent from the other side. We also consider another set of conformal boundary conditions for which, in the null line limit, the interface mimics the properties expected of a horizon. In this case, we devise a scattering experiment, where (zero-point subtracted) energy from one CFT is fully transmitted to the other CFT, while from the other CFT, energy can neither be transmitted nor reflected, i.e., it gets lost in the interface. This boundary condition is also responsible for the thermal energy spectrum which mimics Hawking radiation. This is analogous to the black hole where the horizon plays the role of a one-sided ‘membrane’, which accumulates all the interior degrees of freedom and radiates thermally in the presence of quantum fluctuation. Stimulated by this observation, we comment on some plausible construction of wormhole analogues.

Keywords

• Black Holes
• Scale and Conformal Symmetries
• AdS-CFT Correspondence
• Field Theories in Lower Dimensions