The Arithmetic Geometry of AdS$_2$ and its Continuum Limit

According to the 't Hooft–Susskind holography, the black hole entropy, $S_\mathrm{BH}$, is carried by the chaotic microscopic degrees of freedom, which live in the near horizon region and have a Hilbert space of states of finite dimension $d=\exp(S_\mathrm{BH})$. In previous work we have proposed that the near horizon geometry, when the microscopic degrees of freedom can be resolved, can be described by the AdS$_2[\mathbb{Z}_N]$ discrete, finite and random geometry, where $N\propto S_\mathrm{BH}$. It has been constructed by purely arithmetic and group theoretical methods and was studied as a toy model for describing the dynamics of single particle probes of the near horizon region of 4d extremal black holes, as well as to explain, in a direct way, the finiteness of the entropy, $S_\mathrm{BH}$. What has been left as an open problem is how the smooth AdS$_2$ geometry can be recovered, in the limit when $N\to\infty$. In the present article we solve this problem, by showing that the discrete and finite AdS$_2[\mathbb{Z}_N]$ geometry can be embedded in a family of finite geometries, AdS$_2^M[\mathbb{Z}_N]$, where $M$ is another integer. This family can be constructed by an appropriate toroidal compactification and discretization of the ambient $(2+1)$-dimensional Minkowski space-time. In this construction $N$ and $M$ can be understood as “infrared” and “ultraviolet” cutoffs respectively. The above construction enables us to obtain the continuum limit of the AdS$_2^M[\mathbb{Z}_N]$ discrete and finite geometry, by taking both $N$ and $M$ to infinity in a specific correlated way, following a reverse process: Firstly, we show how it is possible to recover the continuous, toroidally compactified, AdS$_2[\mathbb{Z}_N]$ geometry by removing the ultraviolet cutoff; secondly, we show how it is possible to remove the infrared cutoff in a specific decompactification limit, while keeping the radius of AdS$_2$ finite. It is in this way that we recover the standard non-compact AdS$_2$ continuum space-time. This method can be applied directly to higher-dimensional AdS spacetimes.