In this article, we study the small sphere limit of the Wang-Yau quasi-local energy defined in [18,19]. Given a point p in a spacetime N , we consider a canonical family of surfaces approaching p along its future null cone and evaluate the limit of the Wang-Yau quasi-local energy. The evaluation relies on solving an "optimal embedding equation" whose solutions represent critical points of the quasi-local energy. For a spacetime with matter fields, the scenario is similar to that of the large sphere limit found in [7]. Namely, there is a natural solution which is a local minimum, and the limit of its quasi-local energy recovers the stress-energy tensor at p . For a vacuum spacetime, the quasi-local energy vanishes to higher order and the solution of the optimal embedding equation is more complicated. Nevertheless, we are able to show that there exists a solution which is a local minimum and that the limit of its quasi-local energy is related to the Bel-Robinson tensor. Together with earlier work [7], this completes the consistency verification of the Wang-Yau quasi-local energy with all classical limits.

We define new energy momentum surface density and quasilocal mass for the boundary surface of a spacelike region in spacetime. Isometric embeddings of such a surface into the Minkowski space are used as reference surfaces in the definition. When the reference surface lies in a flat three-dimensional space slice of the Minkowski space, our expression recovers the Brown-York and Liu-Yau quasilocal mass. Moreover, we prove the positivity of the new quasilocal mass under the dominant energy condition and show that it is zero for surfaces in the Minkowski space.

This is the second part of a three part series of papers. In this paper, we consider a general class of $N\times N$ random band matrices $H=(H_{ij})$ whose entries are centered random variables, independent up to a symmetry constraint. We assume that the variances $\mathbb E |H_{ij}|^2$ form a band matrix with typical band width $1\ll W\ll N$. We consider the generalized resolvent of $H$ defined as $G(Z):=(H - Z)^{-1}$, where $Z$ is a deterministic diagonal matrix such that $Z_{ij}=\left(z\mathds{1}_{1\le i \le W}+\wt z\mathds{1}_{ i > W} \right) \delta_{ij}$, with two distinct spectral parameters $z\in \mathbb C_+:=\{z\in \mathbb C:\im z>0\}$ and $\wt z\in \mathbb C_+\cup \mathbb R$. In this paper, we prove a sharp bound for the local law of the generalized resolvent $G$ for $W\gg N^{3/4}$. This bound is a key input for the proof of delocalization and bulk universality of random band matrices in [2]. Our proof depends on a fluctuations averaging bound on certain averages of polynomials in the resolvent entries, which will be proved in [10].

We explore an identity between two branching graphs and propose a physical meaning in the context of the gauge-gravity correspondence. From the mathematical point of view, the identity equates probabilities associated with GT, the branching graph of the unitary groups, with probabilities associated with Y, the branching graph of the symmetric groups. In order to furnish the identity with physical meaning, we exactly reproduce these probabilities as the square of three point functions involving certain hook-shaped backgrounds. We study these backgrounds in the context of LLM geometries and discover that they are domain walls interpolating two AdS spaces with different radii. We also find that, in certain cases, the probabilities match the eigenvalues of some observables, the embedding chain charges. We finally discuss a holographic interpretation of the mathematical identity through our results.

This article considers the quasi-local energy in reference to a general static spacetime. We follow the approach developed by the authors in [19, 20, 7, 9] and define the quasi-local energy as a difference of surface Hamiltonians, which are derived from the Einstein-Hilbert action. The new quasi-local energy provides an effective gauge independent measurement of how far a spacetime deviates away from the reference static spacetime on a finitely extended region.