The entanglement entropy between quantum fields inside and outside a black hole horizon is a promising candidate for the microscopic origin of black hole entropy. We show that the entanglement entropy may be defined in loop quantum gravity, and compute its value for spin network states. The entanglement entropy for an arbitrary region of space is expressed as a sum over punctures where the spin network intersects the region's boundary. Our result agrees asymptotically with results previously obtained from the isolated horizon framework, and we give a justification for this agreement. We conclude by proposing a new method for studying corrections to the area law and its implications for quantum corrections to the gravitational action.
Entanglement entropy is often speculated as a strong candidate for the origin of the black-hole entropy. To judge whether this speculation is true or not, it is effective to investigate the whole structure of thermodynamics obtained from the entanglement entropy, rather than just to examine the apparent structure of the entropy alone or to compare it with that of the black hole entropy. It is because entropy acquires a physical significance only when it is related to the energy and the temperature of a system. From this point of view, we construct a `thermodynamics of entanglement' by introduc…
Using the AdS/CFT correspondence we calculate the explicit form of the entanglement entropy for the charged BTZ black hole. The leading term in the large temperature expansion of the entropy function for this black hole reproduces its Bekenstein-Hawking entropy and the subleading term, representing the first corrections due to quantum entanglement, behaves as a logarithm of the BH entropy.
There have been many attempts to understand the statistical origin of black-hole entropy. Among them, entanglement entropy and the brick wall model are strong candidates. In this paper we show a relation between entanglement entropy and the brick wall model: the brick wall model seeks the maximal value of the entanglement entropy. In other words, the entanglement approach reduces to the brick wall model when we seek the maximal entanglement entropy .
A new interpretation of entanglement entropy is proposed: entanglement entropy of a pure state with respect to a division of a Hilbert space into two subspaces 1 and 2 is an amount of information, which can be transmitted through 1 and 2 from a system interacting with 1 to another system interacting with 2. The transmission medium is quantum entanglement between 1 and 2. In order to support the interpretation, suggestive arguments are given: variational principles in entanglement thermodynamics and quantum teleportation. It is shown that a quantum state having maximal entanglement entropy play…
We study the possibility that black hole entropy be identified as entropy of entanglement across the horizon of the vacuum of a quantum field in the presence of the black hole. We argue that a recent proposal for computing entanglement entropy using AdS/CFT holography implies that black hole entropy can be exactly equated with entanglement entropy. The implementation of entanglement entropy in this context solves all the problems (such as cutoff dependence and the species problem) typically associated with this identification.
We point out that the entropy of (near) extremal black holes can be interpreted as the entanglement entropy of dual conformal quantum mechanics via AdS2/CFT1. As an explicit example, we study near extremal BTZ black holes and derive this claim from AdS3/CFT2. We also analytically compute the entanglement entropy in the two dimensional CFT of a free Dirac fermion compactified on a circle at finite temperature. From this result, we clarify the relation between the thermal entropy and entanglement entropy, which is essential for the entanglement interpretation of black hole entropy.
We analyze how excitations affect the entanglement entropy for an arbitrary entangling interval in a 2d conformal field theory (CFT) using the holographic entanglement entropy techniques as well as direct CFT computations. We introduce the excitation entanglement entropy Δ_h S, the difference between the entanglement entropy generic excitations and their arbitrary descendants denoted by h. The excitation entanglement entropy, unlike the entanglement entropy, is a finite quantity (independent of the cutoff), and hence a good physical observable. We show that the excitation entanglement entropy …
This is a comment on articles Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 240401 (2017) [arXiv:1707.06050] and Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 240402 (2017) [arXiv:1707.06036]. We argue that gravity-induced entanglement by Newtonian forces is agnostic to the quantum or classical nature of the gravitational true degrees of freedom.
We examine the deSitter entropy in the braneworld model with the Gauss-Bonnet/Lovelock terms. Then, we can see that the deSitter entropy computed through the Euclidean action exactly coincides with the holographic entanglement entropy.
Renormalized entanglement entropy can be defined using the replica trick for any choice of renormalization scheme; renormalized entanglement entropy in holographic settings is expressed in terms of renormalized areas of extremal surfaces. In this paper we show how holographic renormalized entanglement entropy can be expressed in terms of the Euler invariant of the surface and renormalized curvature invariants. For a spherical entangling region in an odd-dimensional CFT, the renormalized entanglement entropy is proportional to the Euler invariant of the holographic entangling surface, with the …
We compare the one-loop corrections to the entropy of a black hole, from quantum fields of spin zero, one-half, and one, to the entropy of entanglement of the fields. For fields of spin zero and one-half the black hole entropy is identical to the entropy of entanglement. For spin one the two entropies differ by a contact interaction with the horizon which appears in the black hole entropy but not in the entropy of entanglement. The contact interaction can be expressed as a path integral over particle paths which begin and end on the horizon; it is the field theory limit of the interaction prop…
We investigate the behavior of the entanglement entropy of a confining gauge theory near cosmological singularities using gauge/gravity duality. As expected, the coefficients of the UV divergent terms are given by simple geometric properties of the entangling surface in the time-dependent background. The finite (universal) part of the entanglement entropy either grows without bound or remains bounded depending on the nature of the singularity and entangling region. We also discuss a confinement/deconfinement phase transition as signaled by the entanglement entropy.
The island rule for the entanglement entropy is applied to an eternal Reissner-Nordström black hole. The key ingredient is that the black hole is assumed to be in thermal equilibrium with a heat bath of an arbitrary temperature and so the generalized entropy is treated as being off-shell. Taking the on-shell condition to the off-shell generalized entropy, we find the generalized entropy and then obtain the entanglement entropy following the island rule. For the non-extremal black hole, the entanglement entropy grows linearly in time and can be saturated after the Page time as expected. The ent…
Both reflected entropy and entanglement negativity provide valid measures of entanglement between subsystems of a mixed state. For general 2D eternal black holes coupled with CFT matters in large $c$ limit, we perform the replica-trick computation and find that both effective Renyi reflected entropy and effective entanglement negativity can be expressed in terms of the combination of modified backreacting cosmic branes in $\mathrm{AdS}_3$ bulk. We then develop a holographic scheme to calculate effective reflected entropy and entanglement negativity for general 2D eternal black holes coupled wi…
We provide a derivation of holographic entanglement entropy for spherical entangling surfaces. Our construction relies on conformally mapping the boundary CFT to a hyperbolic geometry and observing that the vacuum state is mapped to a thermal state in the latter geometry. Hence the conformal transformation maps the entanglement entropy to the thermodynamic entropy of this thermal state. The AdS/CFT dictionary allows us to calculate this thermodynamic entropy as the horizon entropy of a certain topological black hole. In even dimensions, we also demonstrate that the universal contribution to th…
We study the holographic entanglement entropy in metal/superconductor phase transition with exponential nonlinear electrodynamics (ENE) in four and five dimensional spacetimes. We find that the holographic entanglement entropy is powerful tool in studying the properties of the holographic phase transition. For the operator $\langle\mathcal{O}_{+}\rangle$, we observe that the entanglement entropy in 4-dimensional spacetime decreases in metal phase but changes non-monotonously in superconducting phase with the increase of the ENE parameter. Interestingly, the change of the entanglement entropy i…
In this paper, we calculate the topological entanglement entropy of the BTZ black hole and find that it coincides with that for fractional quantum Hall state. So the BTZ black holes have the same topological order with the fractional quantum Hall state. This fact indicate that the BTZ black holes have long-range entanglement.
It is shown that the Hartle-Hawking state of a scalar field is a maximum of entanglement entropy in the space of pure quantum states satisfying the condition that backreaction is finite. In other words, the Hartle-Hawking state is a curved-space analogue of the EPR state, which is also a maximum of entanglement entropy.
We present a coherent account of how the entanglement interpretation, thermofield dynamical description and the brick wall formulations (with the ground state correctly identified) fit into a connected and self-consistent explanation of what Bekenstein-Hawking entropy is, and where it is located.
We study entanglement entropy in a particular tensor-scalar theory: Horndeski gravity. Our goal is two-fold: investigate the Lewkowycz-Maldacena proposal for entanglement entropy in the presence of a tensor-scalar coupling and address a puzzle existing in the literature regarding the thermal entropy of asymptotically AdS Horndeski black holes. Using the squashed cone method, i.e. turning on a conical singularity in the bulk, we derive the functional for entanglement entropy in Horndeski gravity. We analyze the divergence structure of the bulk equation of motion. Demanding that the leading dive…
We show the entanglement entropy in certain quantum field theories to contain state-dependent divergences. Both perturbative and holographic examples are exhibited. However, quantities such as the relative entropy and the generalized entropy of black holes remain finite, due to cancellation of divergences. We classify all possible state-dependent divergences that can appear in both perturbatively renormalizeable and holographic covariant $d\le 6$ quantum field theories.
We investigate the behavior of entanglement entropy across the holographic p-wave superconductor phase transition in an Einstein-Yang-Mills theory with a negative cosmological constant. The holographic entanglement entropy is calculated for a strip geometry at AdS boundary. It is found that the entanglement entropy undergoes a dramatic change as we tune the ratio of the gravitational constant to the Yang-Mills coupling, and that the entanglement entropy does behave as the thermal entropy of the background black holes. That is, the entanglement entropy will show the feature of the second order …
The entanglement entropy associated with a spatial boundary in quantum field theory is UV divergent, with the leading term proportional to the area of the boundary. For a class of quantum states defined by a path integral, the Callan-Wilczek formula gives a geometrical definition of the entanglement entropy. We show that, for this class of quantum states, the entanglement entropy is rendered UV-finite by precisely the counterterms required to cancel the UV divergences in the gravitational effective action. In particular, the leading contribution to the entanglement entropy is given by the reno…
We continue the study of entanglement entropy for a QFT through a perturbative expansion of the path integral definition of the reduced density matrix. The universal entanglement entropy for a CFT perturbed by a relevant operator is calculated to second order in the coupling. We also explore the geometric dependence of entanglement entropy for a deformed planar entangling surface, finding surprises at second order.
Over the last three decades entanglement entropy has been obtained for quantum fields propagating in genus zero topologies (Spheres). For scalar fields propagating in these topologies, it has been shown that the entanglement entropy scales as area. In the last few years non-trivial topologies are increasingly relevant for different areas. For instance, in describing quantum phases, it has been realized that long-range entangled states are described by topological order. If quantum entanglement can plausibly provide explanation for these, it then imperative to obtain entanglement entropy in the…
We introduce a simple geometrical construction similar to covariant holographic entanglement entropy but with the addition of a new term proportional to boundary region volume. This new procedure has properties strongly resembling classical Shannon entropy of probability distributions rather than von Neumann entropy, so we call the quantity holographic Shannon entropy. The holographic Shannon entropy of a region $A$ is divergent in AdS/CFT, but upon regulation, it appears to be equal to the outer entropy of the entanglement wedge of $A$ with the entanglement wedge of the complement of $A$ held…
We discuss a cyclic cosmology in which the visible universe, or introverse, is all that is accessible to an observer while the extroverse represents the total spacetime originating from the time when the dark energy began to dominate. It is argued that entanglement entropy of the introverse is the more appropriate quantity to render infinitely cyclic, rather than the entropy of the total universe. Since vanishing entanglement entropy implies disconnected spacetimes, at the turnaround when the introverse entropy is zero the disconnected extroverse can be jettisoned with impunity.
We derive differential equations for the flow of entanglement entropy as a function of the metric and the couplings of the theory. The variation of the universal part of entanglement entropy under a local Weyl transformation is related to the variation under a local change in the couplings. We show that this relation is in fact equivalent to the trace Ward identity. As a concrete application of our formalism, we express the entanglement entropy for massive free fields as a two-point function of the energy-momentum tensor.
In this paper we study the survival of entanglement of a scalar field state created during inflation. We find that there exist UV-finite subdominant contributions to the entanglement entropy per momentum mode that scale with the number of e-folds between horizon exit and the end of inflation, and depend on the logarithm of the radius of the entangling surface, which can be taken to be the horizon sphere. We argue that this entanglement entropy allows for the formation of entangled Primordial Black Holes (PBH). We find that the entropy arising from the entanglement between PBH is small compared…
It is known that gauge fields defined on manifolds with spatial boundaries support states localized at the boundaries. In this paper, we demonstrate how coarse-graining over these states can lead to an entanglement entropy. In particular, we show that the entanglement entropy of the ground state for the quantum Hall effect on a disk exhibits an approximate ``area " law.
We argue that Hartle-Hawking states in the Regge quantum gravity model generically contain non-trivial entanglement between gravity and matter fields. Generic impossibility to talk about "matter in a point of space" is in line with the idea of an emergent spacetime, and as such could be taken as a possible candidate for a criterion for a plausible theory of quantum gravity. Finally, this new entanglement could be seen as an additional "effective interaction", which could possibly bring corrections to the weak equivalence principle.
We investigate the phenomenon of gravity-induced entanglement in optomechanical systems. Assuming photon number conservation and the Newtonian potential expanded up to the quadratic order of the oscillator positions, we exactly solve the dynamics of the optomehcanical systems. Then, we find that the phase difference due to the Newtonian gravity leads to the large entanglement of photons in separated cavities. We clarify the generating mechanism of large gravity-induced entanglements in optomechanical systems in an exact manner. We also determine the characteristic time to generate the maximal …
A holographic derivation of the entanglement entropy in quantum (conformal) field theories is proposed from AdS/CFT correspondence. We argue that the entanglement entropy in d+1 dimensional conformal field theories can be obtained from the area of d dimensional minimal surfaces in AdS_{d+2}, analogous to the Bekenstein-Hawking formula for black hole entropy. We show that our proposal perfectly reproduces the correct entanglement entropy in 2D CFT when applied to AdS_3. We also compare the entropy computed in AdS_5 \times S^5 with that of the free N=4 super Yang-Mills.
The entanglement entropy has been historically studied by many authors in order to obtain quantum mechanical interpretations of the gravitational entropy. The discovery of AdS/CFT correspondence leads to the idea of holographic entanglement entropy, which is a clear solution to this important problem in gravity. In this article, we would like to give a quick survey of recent progresses on the holographic entanglement entropy. We focus on its gravitational aspects, so that it is comprehensible to those who are familiar with general relativity and basics of quantum field theory.
This is an extended version of our short report hep-th/0603001, where a holographic interpretation of entanglement entropy in conformal field theories is proposed from AdS/CFT correspondence. In addition to a concise review of relevant recent progresses of entanglement entropy and details omitted in the earlier letter, this paper includes the following several new results : We give a more direct derivation of our claim which relates the entanglement entropy with the minimal area surfaces in the AdS_3/CFT_2 case as well as some further discussions on higher dimensional cases. Also the relation …
In this article, we review recent progresses on the holographic understandings of the entanglement entropy in the AdS/CFT correspondence. After reviewing the general idea of holographic entanglement entropy, we will explain its applications to confinement/deconfinement phase transitions, black hole entropy and covariant formulation of holography.
The entanglement entropy of the event horizon is known to be plagued by the UV divergence due to the infinitely blue-shifted near horizon modes. In this paper we calculate the entanglement entropy using the transplanckian dispersion relation, which has been proposed to model the quantum gravity effects. We show that, very generally, the entropy is rendered UV finite due to the suppression of high energy modes effected by the transplanckian dispersion relation.
Recently, a holographic computation of the entanglement entropy in conformal field theories has been proposed via the AdS/CFT correspondence. One of the most important properties of the entanglement entropy is known as the strong subadditivity. This requires that the entanglement entropy should be a concave function with respect to geometric parameters. It is a non-trivial check on the proposal to see if this property is indeed satisfied by the entropy computed holographically. In this paper we examine several examples which are defined by annuli or cusps, and confirm the strong subadditivity …
We analyze the Ricci flow of a noncompact metric that describes a two-dimensional black hole. We consider entanglement entropy of a 2d black hole which is due to the quantum correlations between two subsystems: one is inside and the other is outside the black hole horizon. It is demonstrated that the entanglement entropy is monotonic along the Ricci flow.
It is shown, non--rigorously, that the effective action on a Z_q factored odd spheres (lune) has a vanishing derivative at q=1. This leaves the effective action on the ordinary odd d-sphere as (minus) the value of the entanglement entropy associated with a (d-2)-sphere. Some numbers are given.
We use the conformal invariance and the holographic correspondence to fully specify the dependence of entanglement entropy on the extrinsic geometry of the 2d surface $Σ$ that separates two subsystems of quantum strongly coupled ${\mathcal{N}}=4$ SU(N) superconformal gauge theory. We extend this result and calculate entanglement entropy of a generic 4d conformal field theory. As a byproduct, we obtain a closed-form expression for the entanglement entropy in flat space-time when $Σ$ is sphere $S_2$ and when $Σ$ is two-dimensional cylinder. The contribution of the type A conformal anomaly to ent…