Holography in a background-independent effective theory

Abstract

We discuss the meaning of the strong equivalence principle when applied to a quantum field theory. We show that, because of unitary inequivalence of accelerated frames, the only way for the strong equivalence principle to apply exactly is to add a boundary term representing the decoherence of degrees of freedom leaving the observable region of the bulk. We formulate the constraints necessary for the partition function to be covariant with respect to non-inertial transformations and argue that, when the non-unitary part is expressed as a functional integral over the horizon, holography arises naturally as a consequence of the equivalence principle.