On extremal surfaces and de Sitter entropy

Abstract

We study extremal surfaces in the static patch coordinatization of de Sitter space, focussing on the future and past universes. We find connected timelike codim-2 surfaces on a boundary Euclidean time slice stretching from the future boundary $I^+$ to the past boundary $I^-$. In a limit, these surfaces pass through the bifurcation region and have minimal area with a divergent piece alone, whose coefficient is de Sitter entropy in 4-dimensions. These are reminiscent of rotated versions of certain surfaces in the $AdS$ black hole. We close with some speculations on a possible $dS/CFT$ interpretation of 4-dim de Sitter space as dual to two copies of ghost-CFTs in an entangled state. For a simple toy model of two copies of ghost-spin chains, we argue that similar entangled states always have positive norm and positive entanglement.

Latex, 20pgs, 3 figs, v3: clarifications added, some reorganizing of text, review of ghost-spin chains added, matches version to be published, v4: further minor clarifications added