Freelance Holography, Part I: Setting Boundary Conditions Free in Gauge/Gravity Correspondence

Abstract: We explore AdS/CFT duality in the large $N$ limit, where the duality reduces to gauge/gravity correspondence, from the viewpoint of covariant phase space formalism (CPSF). In particular, we elucidate the role of the $W, Y$, and $Z$ freedoms (also known as ambiguities) in the CPSF and their meaning in the gauge/gravity correspondence. We show that $W$-freedom is associated with the choice of boundary conditions and slicing of solution space in the gravity side, which has been related to deformations by multi-trace operators in the gauge theory side. The gauge/gravity correspondence implies the equivalence of on-shell symplectic potentials on both sides, thereby the $Y$-freedom of the gravity side specifies the on-shell symplectic form of the gauge theory side. The $Z$-freedom, which determines the corner Lagrangian on the gravity side, establishes the boundary conditions and choice of slicing in the boundary theory and its solution space. We utilize these results to systematically formulate freelance holography in which boundary conditions of the fields on the gravity side are chosen freely and are not limited to Dirichlet boundary conditions and discuss some examples with different boundary conditions.