Perspectives on Bulk Locality in Gauge/Gravity Duality

In this thesis we consider the question of how local bulk physics emerges from the perspective of the boundary field theory in the supergravity limit of gauge/gravity duality. We take three different approaches to this problem, which in retrospect correspond to the different ways of thinking about quantum field theory in the bulk. In the S-matrix approach, we study crossing constraints on two-to-two scattering amplitudes, and provide evidence for the conjecture that a large N expansion and a hierarchy in the spectrum of operator dimension are sufficient conditions for a conformal theory to have a local bulk dual. In the path integral approach we attempt to connect the holographic and Wilsonian renormalization groups. An important role for multi-trace operators is discovered. Although locality remains unexplained, several parallels between holographic and Wilsonian renormalization are made and a physical picture of how the bulk dynamics might emerge from the perspective of the renormalization group is sketched. In the last part we consider the construction of the bulk field operators in terms of smeared boundary operators. Aside from extending the previous work on this construction in several directions, we formulate conditions for obtaining the field operators without already knowing the bulk dynamics and address some paradoxes related to a cat inside a black hole.