Back-reaction in massless de Sitter QFTs: holography, gravitational DBI action and f(R) gravity

Abstract: We employ gauge-gravity duality to study the backreaction effect of 4-dimensional large-$N$ quantum field theories on constant-curvature backgrounds, and in particular de Sitter space-time. The field theories considered are holographic QFTs, dual to RG flows between UV and IR CFTs. We compute the holographic QFT contribution to the gravitational effective action for 4d Einstein manifold backgrounds. We find that for a given value of the cosmological constant $\lambda$, there generically exist two backreacted constant-curvature solutions, as long as $\lambda < \lambda_{\textrm{max}} \sim M_p^2 / N^2$, otherwise no such solutions exist. Moreover, the backreaction effect interpolates between that of the UV and IR CFTs. We also find that, at finite cutoff, a holographic theory always reduces the bare cosmological constant, and this is the consequence of thermodynamic properties of the partition function of holographic QFTs on de Sitter.