Emergent Mixed States for Baby Universes and Black Holes

I will discuss the fate of quantum states in the semiclassical limit of the AdS/CFT correspondence, focusing on cases where the gravitational side involves black holes or “baby universes.” Typically, these states do not converge to simple, pure states. For black holes—where the entropy diverges as G→0—they can instead approach mixed states, reflecting an effective loss of information in the semiclassical limit. For configurations involving baby universes, wormhole effects prevent a conventional semiclassical limit from existing. I will comment on extensions of the AdS/CFT correspondence involving averaging.