Monotonicity of the RG flow in an emergent dual holography of a worldsheet nonlinear σ model

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Based on the renormalization group (RG) flow of worldsheet bosonic string theory, we construct an effective holographic dual description of the target space theory identifying the RG scale with the emergent extra dimension. This results in an effective dilaton-gravity-gauge theory, analogous to the low-energy description of bosonic M theory. We argue that this holographic dual effective field theory is nonperturbative in the α′ expansion, where a class of string quantum fluctuations are resummed to all orders. To investigate the monotonicity of the RG flow of the target space metric in the emergent spacetime, we consider entropy production along the RG flow. We construct a microscopic entropy functional based on the probability distribution function of the holographic dual effective field theory, regarded as Gibbs- or Shannon-type entropy. Given that the Ricci flow represents the 1-loop RG flow equation of the target space metric for the 2D nonlinear sigma model, and motivated by Perelman’s proof of the monotonicity of Ricci flow, we propose a Perelman’s entropy functional for the holographic dual effective field theory. This entropy functional is also nonperturbative in the α′ expansion, and thus, generalizes the 1-loop result to the all-loop order. Furthermore, utilizing the equivalence between the Hamilton-Jacobi equation and the local RG equation, we suggest that the RG flow of holographic Perelman’s entropy functional is the Weyl anomaly. This eventually reaffirms the monotonicity of RG flow for the emergent target spacetime but in a nonperturbative way. Interestingly, we find that the microscopic entropy production rate can be determined by integrating the rate of change of the holographic Perelman’s entropy functional over all possible metric configurations along the flow. Published by the American Physical Society 2025