We study the confinement/deconfinement transition in the D0-brane matrix model (often called the BFSS matrix model) and its one-parameter deformation (the BMN matrix model) numerically by lattice Monte Carlo simulations. Our results confirm general expectations from the dual string/M-theory picture for strong coupling. In particular, we observe the confined phase in the BFSS matrix model, which is a nontrivial consequence of the M-theory picture. We suggest that these models provide us with an ideal framework to study the Schwarzschild black hole, M-theory, and furthermore, the parameter region of the phase transition between type IIA superstring theory and M-theory. A detailed study of M-theory via lattice Monte Carlo simulations of the D0-brane matrix model might be doable with much smaller computational resources than previously expected.

We test the gauge/gravity duality between the matrix model and type IIA string theory at low temperatures with unprecedented accuracy. To this end, we perform lattice Monte Carlo simulations of the Berenstein-Maldacena-Nastase (BMN) matrix model, which is the one-parameter deformation of the Banks-Fischler-Shenker-Susskind (BFSS) matrix model, taking both the large N and continuum limits. We leverage the fact that sufficiently small flux parameters in the BMN matrix model have a negligible impact on the energy of the system while stabilizing the flat directions so that simulations at smaller N than in the BFSS matrix model are possible. Hence, we can perform a precision measurement of the large N continuum energy at the lowest temperatures to date. The energy is in perfect agreement with supergravity predictions including estimations of α′-corrections from previous simulations. At the lowest temperature where we can simulate efficiently (T = 0.25λ1/3, where λ is the ’t Hooft coupling), the difference in energy to the pure supergravity prediction is less than 10%. Furthermore, we can extract the coefficient of the 1/N4 corrections at a fixed temperature with good accuracy, which was previously unknown.

We test a conjecture by Maldacena and Milekhin for the ungauged version of the Berenstein-Maldacena-Nastase (BMN) matrix model by lattice Monte Carlo simulation. The numerical results reproduce the perturbative and gravity results in the limit of large and small flux parameter, respectively, and are consistent with the conjecture.

In this paper, we continue the analysis of the effective model of quantum Schwarz­schild black holes recently proposed by some of the authors in [1,2]. In the resulting quantum-corrected spacetime the central singularity is resolved by a black-to-white hole bounce, quantum effects become relevant at a unique mass-independent curvature scale, while they become negligible in the low curvature region near the horizon and classical Schwarzschild geometry is approached asymptotically. This is the case independently of the relation between the black and white hole masses, which are thus freely specifiable independent observables. A natural question then arises about the phenomenological implications of the resulting non-singular effective spacetime and whether some specific relation between the masses can be singled out from a phenomenological perspective. Here we focus on the thermodynamic properties of the effective polymer black hole and analyze the corresponding quantum corrections as functions of black and white hole masses. The study of the relevant thermodynamic quantities such as temperature, specific heat, and horizon entropy reveals that the effective spacetime generically admits an extremal minimal-sized configuration of quantum-gravitational nature characterized by vanishing temperature and entropy. For large masses, the classically expected results are recovered at leading order and quantum corrections are negligible, thus providing us with a further consistency check of the model. The explicit form of the corrections depends on the specific relationship among the masses. In particular, a first-order logarithmic correction to the black hole entropy is obtained for a quadratic mass relation. The latter corresponds to the case of proper finite-length effects which turn out to be compatible with a minimal length generalized uncertainty principle associated with an extremal Planck-sized black hole.

We discuss the confined phase in the D0-brane matrix model and its interpretation in terms of gravity using gauge/gravity duality based on [1]. In particular, at very low energies we expect the system to describe the M-theory region and not type IIA supergravity and we provide numerical evidence for this.