Quantum Black Hole Chemistry from Double Holography

Abstract

Extended black hole thermodynamics exposes a sharp tension in the usual holographic dictionary: at fixed boundary conformal frame, changing the AdS radius changes both the central charge and the spatial volume of the CFT, apparently locking the color and volume sectors of the first law. We show that this degeneracy is naturally removed for quantum black holes in Karch--Randall double holography. The mechanism is intrinsically semiclassical. Replacing the holographic regulator surface by a physical brane induces gravity coupled to a cutoff CFT, so classical bulk black holes become lower-dimensional quantum black holes whose geometry includes the cutoff-matter stress tensor to all orders in backreaction. This backreacting matter sector supplies a color variable distinct from the defect volume. We demonstrate the mechanism explicitly for the quantum BTZ black hole. Thus quantum backreaction resolves the same color-volume degeneracy addressed by the recent Weyl-factor proposal, but without introducing a non-standard boundary modulus. Instead, the missing thermodynamic direction is supplied by the physical cutoff-matter sector of the doubly holographic quantum black hole.