We discuss various aspects of D-branes in string theory and holography in string theory and loop quantum gravity. One way to study D-branes is from a microscopic perspective, using conformal field theory techniques. For example, we investigate the question of how D-branes can be introduced into orbifolded theories. Another way to study D-branes is from a space-time perspective. An example is provided by unstable D-branes, where we compute an effective action describing the decay of a bosonic D-brane. The holographic principle is a proposed duality which suggests that a theory in any region has a dual description on the boundary. We explore two examples: (1) The area law for the entropy of a black hole in the framework of loop quantum gravity, related to particular regularizations of the area operator. (2) The AdS/CFT correspondence proposal, where we investigate a string pulsating on AdS using spin chains.

The idea of holography [1, 2] finds a concrete realization in form of the AdS/CFT correspondence [3, 4]. This duality relates a field theory with conformal symmetries to quantum gravity living in one higher dimension. In this thesis we study aspects of black hole quasinormal modes, higher spin theories and entanglement entropy in the context of this duality. In almost all cases we have been able to subject the duality to some precision tests. Quasinormal modes encode the spectrum of black holes and the time-scale of pertur- bations therein [5]. From the dual CFT viewpoint they are the poles of retarded Green's function (or peaks in the spectral function) [6]. Quasinormal modes were previously studied for scalar, gauge field and fermion fluctuations [7]. We solve for these quasinormal modes of higher spin (s _ 2) fields in the background of the BTZ black hole [8, 9]. We obtain an exact solution for a field of arbitrary spin s (integer or half-integer) in the BTZ background. This implies that the BTZ is perhaps the only known black hole background where such an analysis can be done analytically for all bosonic and fermionic fields. The quasinormal modes are shown to match precisely with the poles of the corresponding Green's function in the CFT living on the boundary. Furthermore, we show that one-loop determinants of higher spin fields can also be written as a product form [10] in terms of these quasinormal modes and this agrees with the same obtained by integrating the heat-kernel [11]. We then turn our attention to dualities relating higher-spin gravity to CFTs with W algebra symmetries. Since higher spin gravity does go beyond diffeomorphism invariance, one needs re_ned notions of the usual concepts in differential geometry. For example, in general relativity black holes are defined by the presence of the horizon. However, higher spin gravity has an enlarged group of symmetries of which the diffeomorphisms form a subgroup. The appropriate way of thinking of solutions in higher spin gravity is via characterizations which are gauge invariant [12, 13]. We study classical solutions embedded in N = 2 higher spin supergravity. We obtain a general gauge-invariant condition { in terms of the odd roots of the superalgebra and the eigenvalues of the holonomy matrix of the background { for the existence of a Killing spinor such that these solutions are supersymmetric [14]. We also study black holes in higher spin supergravity and show that the partition function of these black holes match exactly with that obtained from a CFT with the same asymptotic symmetry algebra [15]. This involved studying the asymptotic symmetries of the black hole and thereby developing the holographic dictionary for the bulk charges and chemical potentials with the corresponding quantities of the CFT. We finally investigate entanglement entropy in the AdS3/CFT2 context. Entanglement entropy is an useful non-local probe in QFT and many-body physics [16]. We analytically evaluate the entanglement entropy of the free boson CFT on a circle at finite temperature (i.e. on a torus) [17]. This is one of the simplest and well-studied CFTs. The entanglement entropy is calculated via the replica trick using correlation functions of bosonic twist operators on the torus [18]. We have then set up a systematic high temperature expansion of the Renyi entropies and determined their finite size corrections. These _nite size corrections both for the free boson CFT and the free fermion CFT were then compared with the one-loop corrections obtained from bulk three dimensional handlebody spacetimes which have higher genus Riemann surfaces (replica geometry) as its boundary [19]. One-loop corrections in these geometries are entirely determined by the spectrum of the excitations present in the bulk. It is shown that the leading _nite size corrections obtained by evaluating the one-loop determinants on these handlebody geometries exactly match with those from the free fermion/boson CFTs. This provides a test for holographic methods to calculate one-loop corrections to entanglement entropy. We also study conformal field theories in 1+1 dimensions with W-algebra symmetries at _nite temperature and deformed by a chemical potential (_) for a higher spin current. Using OPEs and uniformization techniques, we show that the order _2 correction to the Renyi and entanglement entropies (EE) of a single interval in the deformed theory is universal [20]. This universal feature is also supported by explicit computations for the free fermion and free boson CFTs { for which the EE was calculated by using the replica trick in conformal perturbation theory by evaluating correlators of twist fields with higher spin operators [21]. Furthermore, this serves as a verification of the holographic EE proposal constructed from Wilson lines in higher spin gravity [22, 23]. We also examine relative entropy [24] in the context of higher-spin holography [25]. Relative entropy is a measure of distinguishability between two quantum states. We confirm the expected short-distance behaviour of relative entropy from holography. This is done by showing that the difference in the modular Hamiltonian between a high-temperature state and the vacuum matches with the difference in the entanglement entropy in the short-subsystem regime.

<p dir="ltr">In holographic quantum field theories, a bulk geometric semiclassical spacetime emerges from strongly coupled interacting conformal field theories in one less spatial dimension. This is the celebrated AdS/CFT correspondence. The entanglement entropy of a boundary spatial subregion can be calculated as the area of a codimension two bulk surface homologous to the boundary subregion known as the RT surface. The bulk region contained within the RT surface is known as the entanglement wedge and bulk reconstruction tells us that any operator in the entanglement wedge can be reconstructed as a non-local operator on the corresponding boundary subregion. This notion that entanglement creates geometry is dubbed "ER=EPR'' and has been the driving force behind recent progress in quantum gravity research. In this thesis, we put together two results that use Tomita-Takesaki modular theory and quantum ergodic theory to make progress on contemporary problems in quantum gravity.</p><p dir="ltr">A version of the black hole information loss paradox is the inconsistency between the decay of two-point functions of probe operators in large AdS black holes and the dual boundary CFT calculation where it is an almost periodic function of time. We show that any von Neumann algebra in a faithful normal state that is quantum strong mixing (two-point functions decay) with respect to its modular flow is a type III₁ factor and the state has a trivial centralizer. In particular, for Generalized Free Fields (GFF) in a thermofield double (KMS) state, we show that if the two-point functions are strong mixing, then the entire algebra is strong mixing and a type III₁ factor settling a recent conjecture of Liu and Leutheusser.</p><p dir="ltr">The semiclassical bulk geometry that emerges in the holographic description is a pseudo-Riemannian manifold and we expect a local approximate Poincaré algebra. Near a bifurcate Killing horizon, such a local two-dimensional Poincaré algebra is generated by the Killing flow and the outward null translations along the horizon. We show the emergence of such a Poincaré algebra in any quantum system with modular future and past subalgebras in a limit analogous to the near-horizon limit. These are known as quantum K-systems and they saturate the modular chaos bound. We also prove that the existence of (modular) future/past von Neumann subalgebras also implies a second law of (modular) thermodynamics.</p>

<p>Entanglement entropy (EE) is a quantum information theoretic measure that quantifies the correlations between a region and its surroundings. We study this quantity in the following two setups : </p> <ul> <li>We look at the dynamics of a free minimally coupled, massless scalar field in a deSitter expansion, where the expansion stops after some time (i.e. we quench the expansion) and transitions to flat spacetime. We study the evolution of entanglement entropy (EE) and the Rényi entropy of a spatial region during the expansion and, more interestingly, after the expansion stops, calculating its time evolution numerically. The EE increases during the expansion but the growth is much more rapid after the expansion ends, finally saturating at late times, with saturation values obeying a volume law. The final state of the subregion is a partially thermalized state, reminiscent of a Gibbs ensemble. We comment on application of our results to the question of when and how cosmological perturbations decohere.</li> <li>We study the EE in a theory that is holographically dual to a BTZ black hole geometry in the presence of a scalar field, using the Ryu-Takayangi (RT) formula. Gaberdiel and Gopakumar had conjectured that the theory of N free fermions in 1+1 dimensions, for large N, is dual to a higher spin gravity theory with two scalar fields in 2+1 dimensions. So, we choose our boundary theory to be the theory of N free Dirac fermions with a uniformly winding mass, m e^iqx, in two spacetime dimensions (which describes for instance a superconducting current in an N-channel wire). However, to O(m²), thermodynamic quantities can be computed using Einstein gravity. We aim to check if the same holds true for entanglement entropy (EE). Doing calculations on both sides of the duality, we find that general relativity does indeed correctly account for EE of single intervals to O(m²).</li> </ul>