A proposal for 3d quantum gravity and its bulk factorization

Abstract: Recent progress in AdS/CFT has provided a good understanding of how the bulk spacetime is encoded in the entanglement structure of the boundary CFT. However, little is known about how spacetime emerges directly from the bulk quantum theory. We address this question in an effective 3d quantum theory of pure gravity, which describes the high temperature regime of a holographic CFT. This theory can be viewed as a $q$-deformation and dimensional uplift of JT gravity. Using this model, we show that the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of a two-sided black hole equals the bulk entanglement entropy of gravitational edge modes. In the conventional Chern-Simons description, these black holes correspond to Wilson lines in representations of $\PSL(2,\mathbb{R})\otimes \PSL(2,\mathbb{R}) $. We show that the correct calculation of gravitational entropy suggests we should interpret the bulk theory as an extended topological quantum field theory associated to the quantum semi-group $\SL^+_{q}(2,\mathbb{R})\otimes \SL^+_{q}(2,\mathbb{R})$. Our calculation suggests an effective description of bulk microstates in terms of collective, anyonic degrees of freedom whose entanglement leads to the emergence of the bulk spacetime.