Defects in Jackiw-Teitelboim quantum gravity

Abstract

We classify and study defects in 2d Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity. We show these are holographically described by a deformation of the Schwarzian theory where the reparametrization mode is integrated over different coadjoint orbits of the Virasoro group. We show that the quantization of each coadjoint orbit is connected to 2d Liouville CFT between branes with insertions of Verlinde loop operators. We also propose an interpretation for the exceptional orbits. We use this perspective to solve these deformations of the Schwarzian theory, computing their partition function and correlators. In the process, we define two geometric observables: the horizon area operator Φ_h and the geodesic length operator L(γ). We show this procedure is structurally related to the deformation of the particle-on-a-group quantum mechanics by the addition of a chemical potential. As an example, we solve the low-energy theory of complex SYK with a U(1) symmetry and generalize to the non-abelian case.