Nikolay Bobev, Large N Partition Functions, Holography, and Black Holes

ITMP seminar, Nov 15, 2023
Speaker: Prof. Nikolay Bobev, KU Leuven
Title: Large N Partition Functions, Holography, and Black Holes
Abstract: I will discuss the large N behavior of partition functions of the ABJM theory on compact Euclidean manifolds. I will pay particular attention to the S3 free energy and the topologically twisted index for which I will present closed form expressions valid to all orders in the large N expansion. These results have important implications for holography and the microscopic entropy counting of AdS_4 black holes which I will discuss. I will also briefly discuss generalizations of these results to the superconformal index, as well as to other 3d SCFTs arising from M2-branes. Finally, I will outline how this approach can be used to calculate thermal holographic observables beyond the leading order supergravity approximation.