Abstract. We explore aspects of the physics of de Sitter (dS) space that are relevant to holography with a positive cosmological constant. First, we display a non-local map that commutes with the de Sitter isometries, transforms the bulk–boundary propagator and solutions of free wave equations in de Sitter onto the same quantities in Euclidean anti-de Sitter (EAdS) space, and takes the two boundaries of dS to the single EAdS boundary via an antipodal identification. Second, we compute the action of scalar fields on dS as a functional of boundary data. Third, we display a family of solutions to three-dimensional gravity with a positive cosmological constant in which the equal time sections are arbitrary genus Riemann surfaces, and compute the action of these spaces as a functional of boundary data. These studies suggest that if de Sitter space is dual to a Euclidean conformal field theory (CFT), this theory should involve two disjoint, but possibly entangled factors. We argue that these CFTs would be of a novel form, with unusual hermiticity conditions relating left movers and right movers. After exploring these conditions in a toy model, we combine our observations to propose that a holographic dual description of de Sitter space would involve a pure entangled state in a product of two of our unconventional CFTs associated with the de Sitter boundaries. This state can be constructed to preserve the de Sitter symmetries and its decomposition in a basis appropriate to antipodal inertial observers would lead to the thermal properties of a static patch. To conclude, we discuss the one-parameter family of de Sitter-invariant vacua for a massive free scalar field, and their thermodynamic properties. At the free field level, we find no obvious thermodynamic reason to favour one vacuum over the other.

PACS number: 1110

Print publication: Issue 22 (21 November 2002)
Received 23 September 2002
Published 6 November 2002