We study constraints on the effective field theory (EFT) from the relative entropy between two theories: we refer to these as target and reference theories. The consequence of the non-negativity of the relative entropy is investigated by choosing some reference theories for a given target theory involving field theories, quantum mechanical models, etc. It is found that the constraints on EFTs, e.g., the single massless scalar field with the dimension-eight operator, and SMEFT dimension-eight $SU(N)$ gauge bosonic operators, are consistent with the positivity bounds from the unitarity and causality when the higher-derivative operators are generated by the interaction between heavy and light fields. The constraints on Einstein-Maxwell theory with higher-derivative operators from the non-negativity of relative entropy are also investigated. The constraints on such EFTs from the relative entropy hold under an assumption that perturbative corrections from the interaction involving higher-derivative operators of light fields are not dominant in the EFTs. The consequence of this study on the weak gravity conjecture and the second law of thermodynamics is also discussed.
We consider entanglement measures in 2-2 scattering in quantum field theories, focusing on relative entropy which distinguishes two different density matrices. Relative entropy is investigated in several cases which include $ϕ^4$ theory, chiral perturbation theory ($χPT$) describing pion scattering and dilaton scattering in type II superstring theory. We derive a high energy bound on the relative entropy using known bounds on the elastic differential cross-sections in massive QFTs. In $χPT$, relative entropy close to threshold has simple expressions in terms of ratios of scattering lengths. De…
In this paper, we first study mutual information of excited states in the small subsystem size limit in generic conformal field theory. We then discuss relative entropy of two disjoint subsystems in the same limit.
We consider the gravity dual of the modular Hamiltonian associated to a general subregion of a boundary theory. We use it to argue that the relative entropy of nearby states is given by the relative entropy in the bulk, to leading order in the bulk gravitational coupling. We also argue that the boundary modular flow is dual to the bulk modular flow in the entanglement wedge, with implications for entanglement wedge reconstruction.
Thermodynamics is usually developed starting from entropy and the maximum entropy principle. We investigate here to what extent one can replace entropy with relative entropy which has several advantages, for example in the context of local quantum field theory. We find that the principle of maximum entropy can be replaced by a principle of minimum expected relative entropy. Various ensembles and their thermodynamic potentials can be defined through relative entropy. We also show that thermal fluctuations are in fact governed by a relative entropy. Furthermore we reformulate the third law of th…
We consider the relative entropy between vacuum states of two different theories: a conformal field theory (CFT), and the CFT perturbed by a relevant operator. By restricting both states to the null Cauchy surface in the causal domain of a sphere, we make the relative entropy equal to the difference of entanglement entropies. As a result, this difference has the positivity and monotonicity properties of relative entropy. From this it follows a simple alternative proof of the c-theorem in d=2 space-time dimensions and, for d>2, the proof that the coefficient of the area term in the entanglement…
We make a rigorous computation of the relative entropy between the vacuum state and a coherent state for a free scalar in the framework of AQFT. We study the case of the Rindler Wedge. Previous calculations including path integral methods and computations from the lattice, give a result for such relative entropy which involves integrals of expectation values of the energy-momentum stress tensor along the considered region. However, the stress tensor is in general non unique. That means that if we start with some stress tensor, then we can "improve" it adding a conserved term without modifying …
We obtain new constraints for the modular energy of general states by using the monotonicity property of relative entropy. In some cases, modular energy can be related to the energy density of states and these constraints lead to interesting relations between energy and entropy. In particular, we derive new quantum energy inequalities that improve some previous bounds for the energy density of states in a conformal field theory. Additionally, the inequalities derived in this manner also lead us to conclude that the entropy of the state further restricts the possible amount of negative energy a…
Relative entropy between two states in the same Hilbert space is a fundamental statistical measure of the distance between these states. Relative entropy is always positive and increasing with the system size. Interestingly, for two states which are infinitesimally different to each other, vanishing of relative entropy gives a powerful equation $ΔS=ΔH$ for the first order variation of the entanglement entropy $ΔS$ and the expectation value of the \modu Hamiltonian $ΔH$. We evaluate relative entropy between the vacuum and other states for spherical regions in the AdS/CFT framework. We check tha…
We consider relative entropy in Field Theory as a well defined (non-divergent) quantity of interest. We establish a monotonicity property with respect to the couplings in the theory. As a consequence, the relative entropy in a field theory with a hierarchy of renormalization group fixed points ranks the fixed points in decreasing order of criticality. We argue from a generalized $H$ theorem that Wilsonian RG flows induce an increase in entropy and propose the relative entropy as the natural quantity which increases from one fixed point to another in more than two dimensions.
The relative entropy is a measure of the distinguishability of two quantum states. A great deal of progress has been made in the study of the relative entropy between an excited state and the vacuum state of a conformal field theory (CFT) reduced to a spherical region. For example, when the excited state is a small perturbation of the vacuum state, the relative entropy is known to have a universal expression for \textit{all} CFT's \cite{Faulk-GR-entanglement}. Specifically, the perturbative relative entropy can be written as the symplectic flux of a certain scalar field in an \textit{auxiliary…
We study the relative entropy and the trace square distance, both of which measure the distance between reduced density matrices of two excited states in two dimensional conformal field theories. We find a general formula for the relative entropy between two primary states with the same conformal dimension in the limit of a single small interval and find that in this case the relative entropy is proportional to the trace square distance. We check our general formulae by calculating the relative entropy between two generalized free fields and the trace square distance between the spin and disor…
We examine relative entropy in the context of the higher-spin/CFT duality. We consider 3$d$ bulk configurations in higher spin gravity which are dual to the vacuum and a high temperature state of a CFT with $\mathcal{W}$-algebra symmetries in presence of a chemical potential for a higher spin current. The relative entropy between these states is then evaluated using the Wilson line functional for holographic entanglement entropy. In the limit of small entangling intervals, the relative entropy should vanish for a generic quantum system. We confirm this behaviour by showing that the difference …
We generalize our results in paper I in this series to quantum channels between general v. Neumann algebras, proving the approximate recoverability of states which undergo a small change in relative entropy through the channel. To this end, we derive a strengthened form of the quantum data processing inequality for the change in relative entropy of two states under a channel between two v. Neumann algebras. Compared to the usual inequality, there is an explicit lower bound involving the fidelity between the original state and a recovery channel.
Inspired by the recent work of Bao and Ooguri (BO), we study the distinguishability of the black hole microstates from the thermal state as captured by the average of their relative entropies: the Holevo information. Under the assumption that the vacuum conformal block dominates the entropy calculation, BO find that the average relative entropy vanishes on spatial regions less than half the size of the CFT. However, vacuum block dominance fails for some microstates of the $M=0$ BTZ black hole. We show that this renders the average relative entropy nonzero even on infinitesimal intervals at $O(…
We consider the relative entropy between the vacuum state and a state obtained by applying an exponentiated stress tensor to the vacuum of a chiral conformal field theory on the lightray. The smearing function of the stress tensor can be viewed as a vector field on the real line generating a diffeomorphism. We show that the relative entropy is equal to $c$ times the so-called Schwarzian action of the diffeomorphism. As an application of this result, we obtain a formula for the relative entropy between the vacuum and a solitonic state.
We give a general formula for the relative entropy between the vacuum state and a coherent state, that is a state obtained by applying an exponentiated stress energy tensor to the vacuum of a chiral conformal field theory on the lightray. As an application of this result, we verify the QNEC and the Bekenstein Bound.
Relative entropy is a measure of distinguishability for quantum states, and plays a central role in quantum information theory. The family of Renyi entropies generalizes to Renyi relative entropies that include as special cases most entropy measures used in quantum information theory. We construct a Euclidean path-integral approach to Renyi relative entropies in conformal field theory, then compute the fidelity and the relative entropy of states in one spatial dimension at zero and finite temperature using a replica trick. In contrast to the entanglement entropy, the relative entropy is free o…
Extending our previous work, we study the relative entropy between the reduced density matrices obtained from globally excited states in conformal field theories of arbitrary dimensions. We find a general formula in the small subsystem size limit. When one of the states is the vacuum of the CFT, our result matches with the holographic entanglement entropy computations in the corresponding bulk geometries, including AdS black branes. We also discuss the first asymmetric part of the relative entropy and comment on some implications of the results on the distinguishability of black hole microstat…
One characterization of a chaotic system is the quick delocalization of quantum information (fast scrambling). One therefore expects that in such a system a state quickly becomes locally indistinguishable from its perturbations. In this paper we study the time dependence of the relative entropy between the reduced density matrices of the thermofield double state and its perturbations in two dimensional conformal field theories. We show that in a CFT with a gravity dual, this relative entropy exponentially decays until the scrambling time. This decay is not uniform. We argue that the early time…
We explore the role of sandwiched Renyi relative entropy in AdS/CFT and in finite-dimensional models of holographic quantum error correction. In particular, in the context of operator algebra quantum error correction, we discuss a suitable generalization of sandwiched Renyi relative entropy over finite-dimensional von Neumann algebras. It is then shown that the equality of bulk and boundary sandwiched relative Renyi entropies is equivalent to algebraic encoding of bulk and boundary states, the Ryu-Takayanagi formula, the equality of bulk and boundary relative entropy, and subregion duality. Th…
The second law of thermodynamics is discussed and reformulated from a quantum information theoretic perspective for open quantum systems using relative entropy. Specifically, the relative entropy of a quantum state with respect to equilibrium states is considered and its monotonicity property with respect to an open quantum system evolution is used to obtain second law-like inequalities. We discuss this first for generic quantum systems in contact with a thermal bath and subsequently turn to a formulation suitable for the description of local dynamics in a relativistic quantum field theory. A …
We address the question and related controversy of the formulation of the $q$-entropy, and its relative entropy counterpart, for models described by continuous (non-discrete) sets of variables. We notice that an $L_p$ normalized functional proposed by Lutwak-Yang-Zhang (LYZ), which is essentially a variation of a properly normalized relative Rényi entropy up to a logarithm, has extremal properties that make it an attractive candidate which can be used to construct such a relative $q$-entropy. We comment on the extremizing probability distributions of this LYZ functional, its relation to the es…
We derive the entanglement entropy of chiral fermions on the circle at arbitrary temperature. The spin-sector contribution depends only on the total length of the entangling region, regardless of the configuration of the intervals. Thus three-partite information provides a global indicator for the spin boundary conditions. Together with the modular Hamiltonian, our results provide a systematic way of obtaining relative entropy on the torus.
We introduce the notion of relative volume entropy for two spacetimes with preferred compact spacelike foliations. This is accomplished by applying the notion of Kullback-Leibler divergence to the volume elements induced on spacelike slices. The resulting quantity gives a lower bound on the number of bits which are necessary to describe one metric given the other. For illustration, we study some examples, in particular gravitational waves, and conclude that the relative volume entropy is a suitable device for quantitative comparison of the inhomogeneity of two spacetimes.
