In this talk I will discuss some recent progress in understanding the plateau in the spectral form factor from a perturbative calculation. The driving force behind this is the so-called tau-scaling limit, a novel limit one can consider in quantum gravity, which makes topological expansions more tractable. I will explain what this limit is precisely and discuss its consequences and interpretations in the case of 2d dilaton gravity for both Euclidean and Lorentzian signature. My primary application will be the spectral form factor, but I will also mention other observables that become more tractable in the tau-scaling limit. This talk is based on 2208.13795 and 2302.01360.

IAS, Princeton