Explorations of Non-Perturbative JT Gravity and Supergravity

Abstract

Some recently proposed definitions of Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity and supergravities in terms of combinations of minimal string models are explored, with a focus on physics beyond the perturbative expansion in spacetime topology. While this formally involves solving infinite order non-linear differential equations, it is shown that the physics can be extracted to arbitrarily high accuracy in a simple controlled truncation scheme, using a combination of analytical and numerical methods. The non-perturbative spectral densities are explicitly computed and exhibited. The full spectral form factors, involving crucial non-perturbative contributions from wormhole geometries, are also computed and displayed, showing the non-perturbative details of the characteristic `slope', `dip', `ramp' and `plateau' features. It is emphasized that results of this kind can most likely be readily extracted for other types of JT gravity using the same methods.