The dilaton gravity hologram of double-scaled SYK

Abstract

We work out a precise holographic duality between sine dilaton gravity, and DSSYK. More precisely, canonical quantization of sine dilaton gravity reproduces q-Schwarzian quantum mechanics, which is the auxiliary system that arises from the chord diagrams of DSSYK. The role of the chord number in DSSYK is played by the (Weyl rescaled) geodesic length in the bulk. The most puzzling aspect of reconciling DSSYK with a simple gravitational dual at the classical level is the distinction between temperature and "fake temperature". At the q-Schwarzian level, we clarify how this arises from the constraint that the chord number is positive. The on-shell q-Schwarzian action with the constraint reproduces the thermodynamics of DSSYK. Semi-classically, in sine dilaton gravity this translates to the insertion of a defect, from which we deduce that fake temperature is the Hawking temperature of a smooth Lorentzian black hole. We comment on several relations with dS space. One remarkable feature is that in sine dilaton gravity quantization discretizes spacetime, therefore the Hilbert space is discrete.