Abstract:
We discuss the role of wormholes and eigenbranes in reconciling geometry with quantum mechanics, working within two dimensional dilaton gravity. First, we review how wormholes enable geometry to accurate capture averaged properties of late time correlators of chaotic quantum systems. Because these are averaged properties, naively, wormholes in gravitational theories suggest some ensemble interpretation of those gravitational theories, here embodied by some matrix integral. We then explain that the geometrical description of individual draws of this ensemble means considering the same gravitational theory on specific background spacetime branes. These eigenbranes deform the gravity theory precisely like in open closed string duality and collapse the ensemble to one quantum system.