arXiv subjects

Aron C. Wall

Publications and source records attributed to Aron C. Wall.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2018

A proof of the generalized second law for rapidly changing fields and arbitrary horizon slices

The generalized second law is proven for semiclassical quantum fields falling across a causal horizon, minimally coupled to general relativity. The proof is much more general than previous proofs in that it permits the quantum fields to be rapidly changing with time, and shows that entropy increases when comparing any slice of the horizon to any earlier slice. The proof requires the existence of an algebra of observables restricted to the horizon, satisfying certain axioms (Determinism, Ultralocality, Local Lorentz Invariance, and Stability). These axioms are explicitly verified in the case of free fields of various spins, as well as 1+1 conformal field theories. The validity of the axioms for other interacting theories is discussed.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2018

A Survey of Black Hole Thermodynamics

This is an introductory, up-to-date review of the essentials of black hole thermodynamics. The main topics surveyed are: (i) the four laws of thermodynamics as applied to a black hole horizon, and the current status of their proofs; (ii) different definitions of horizons, and their unique properties; (iii) the nature of black hole entropy, its quantum and stringy corrections, and ultimate origin from quantum gravity microstates; (iv) the focusing law for the area/entropy; and finally (v) the holographic principle, and how we can use it to learn about the information inside black holes.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2018

Asymptotic Charges Cannot Be Measured in Finite Time

To study quantum gravity in asymptotically flat spacetimes, one would like to understand the algebra of observables at null infinity. Here we show that the Bondi mass cannot be observed in finite retarded time, and so is not contained in the algebra on any finite portion of ${\mathscr{I}}^+$. This follows immediately from recently discovered asymptotic entropy bounds. We verify this explicitly, and we find that attempts to measure a conserved charge at arbitrarily large radius in fixed retarded time are thwarted by quantum fluctuations. We comment on the implications of our results to flat space holography and the BMS charges at ${\mathscr{I}}^+$.

hep-th↗

arXiv2017

A Lower Bound on the Energy Density in Classical and Quantum Field Theories

A novel method for deriving energy conditions in stable field theories is described. In a local classical theory with one spatial dimension, a local energy condition always exists. For a relativistic field theory, one obtains the dominant energy condition. In a quantum field theory, there instead exists a quantum energy condition, i.e. a lower bound on the energy density that depends on information-theoretic quantities. Some extensions to higher dimensions are briefly discussed.

hep-th↗

arXiv2017

No Simple Dual to the Causal Holographic Information?

In AdS/CFT, the fine grained entropy of a boundary region is dual to the area of an extremal surface X in the bulk. It has been proposed that the area of a certain 'causal surface' C - i.e. the 'causal holographic information' (CHI) - corresponds to some coarse-grained entropy in the boundary theory. We construct two kinds of counterexamples that rule out various possible duals, using (1) vacuum rigidity and (2) thermal quenches. This includes the 'one-point entropy' proposed by Kelly and Wall, and a large class of related procedures. Also, any coarse-graining that fixes the geometry of the bulk 'causal wedge' bounded by C, fails to reproduce CHI. This is in sharp contrast to the holographic entanglement entropy, where the area of the extremal surface X measures the same information that is found in the 'entanglement wedge' bounded by X.

hep-th↗

arXiv2016

The Generalized Second Law implies a Quantum Singularity Theorem

The generalized second law can be used to prove a singularity theorem, by generalizing the notion of a trapped surface to quantum situations. Like Penrose's original singularity theorem, it implies that spacetime is null geodesically incomplete inside black holes, and to the past of spatially infinite Friedmann--Robertson--Walker cosmologies. If space is finite instead, the generalized second law requires that there only be a finite amount of entropy producing processes in the past, unless there is a reversal of the arrow of time. In asymptotically flat spacetime, the generalized second law also rules out traversable wormholes, negative masses, and other forms of faster-than-light travel between asymptotic regions, as well as closed timelike curves. Furthermore it is impossible to form baby universes which eventually become independent of the mother universe, or to restart inflation. Since the semiclassical approximation is used only in regions with low curvature, it is argued that the results may hold in full quantum gravity. An introductory section describes the second law and its time-reverse, in ordinary and generalized thermodynamics, using either the fine-grained or the coarse-grained entropy. (The fine-grained version is used in all results except those relating to the arrow of time.) A proof of the coarse-grained ordinary second law is given.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2016

Maximin Surfaces, and the Strong Subadditivity of the Covariant Holographic Entanglement Entropy

The covariant holographic entropy conjecture of AdS/CFT relates the entropy of a boundary region R to the area of an extremal surface in the bulk spacetime. This extremal surface can be obtained by a maximin construction, allowing many new results to be proven. On manifolds obeying the null curvature condition, these extremal surfaces: i) always lie outside the causal wedge of R, ii) have less area than the bifurcation surface of the causal wedge, iii) move away from the boundary as R grows, and iv) obey strong subadditivity and monogamy of mutual information. These results suggest that the information in R allows the bulk to be reconstructed all the way up to the extremal area surface. The maximin surfaces are shown to exist on spacetimes without horizons, and on black hole spacetimes with Kasner-like singularities.

hep-th↗

arXiv2016

Testing the Generalized Second Law in 1+1 dimensional Conformal Vacua: An Argument for the Causal Horizon

The anomalous conformal transformation law of the generalized entropy is found for dilaton gravity coupled to a 1+1 conformal matter sector with central charges $c = \tilde{c}$. (When $c \ne \tilde{c}$ the generalized entropy is not invariant under local Lorentz boosts.) It is shown that a certain second null derivative of the entropy, $S_\text{gen}" + (6/c)(S_\text{out}')^2$, is primary, and therefore retains its sign under a general conformal transformation. Consequently all conformal vacua have increasing entropy on causal horizons. Alternative definitions of the horizon, including apparent or dynamical horizons, can have decreasing entropy in any dimension $D \ge 2$. This indicates that the generalized second law should be defined using the causal horizon.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2016

Reconstruction of Bulk Operators within the Entanglement Wedge in Gauge-Gravity Duality

In this Letter we prove a simple theorem in quantum information theory, which implies that bulk operators in the Anti-de Sitter / Conformal Field Theory (AdS/CFT) correspondence can be reconstructed as CFT operators in a spatial subregion $A$, provided that they lie in its entanglement wedge. This is an improvement on existing reconstruction methods, which have at most succeeded in the smaller causal wedge. The proof is a combination of the recent work of Jafferis, Lewkowycz, Maldacena, and Suh on the quantum relative entropy of a CFT subregion with earlier ideas interpreting the correspondence as a quantum error correcting code.

hep-th↗

arXiv2016

State-Dependent Divergences in the Entanglement Entropy

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.

hep-th↗

arXiv2016

Entanglement entropy of electromagnetic edge modes

The vacuum entanglement entropy of Maxwell theory, when evaluated by standard methods, contains an unexpected term with no known statistical interpretation. We resolve this two-decades old puzzle by showing that this term is the entanglement entropy of edge modes: classical solutions determined by the electric field normal to the entangling surface. We explain how the heat kernel regularization applied to this term leads to the negative divergent expression found by Kabat. This calculation also resolves a recent puzzle concerning the logarithmic divergences of gauge fields in 3+1 dimensions.

hep-th↗

arXiv2016

A paucity of bulk entangling surfaces: AdS wormholes with de Sitter interiors

We study and construct spacetimes, dubbed planar AdS-dS-wormholes, satisfying the null energy condition and having two asymptotically AdS boundaries connected through a (non-traversable) inflating wormhole. As for other wormholes, it is natural to expect dual descriptions in terms of two disconnected CFTs in appropriate entangled states. But for our cases certain expected bulk entangling surfaces used by the Hubeny-Rangamani-Takayanagi (HRT) prescription to compute CFT entropy do not exist. In particular, no real codimension-2 extremal surface can run from one end of the wormhole to the other. According to HRT, the mutual information between any two finite-sized subregions (one in each CFT) must then vanish at leading order in large $N$ -- though the leading-order mutual information per unit area between the two CFTs taken as wholes may be nonzero. Some planar AdS-dS-wormholes also fail to have plane-symmetric surfaces that would compute the total entropy of either CFT. We suggest this to remain true of less-symmetric surfaces so that the HRT entropy is ill-defined and some modified prescription is required. It may be possible to simply extend HRT or the closely-related maximin construction by a limiting procedure, though complex extremal surfaces could also play an important role.

hep-th↗

arXiv2015

Second Law Violations in Lovelock Gravity for Black Hole Mergers

We study the classical second law of black hole thermodynamics, for Lovelock theories (other than General Relativity), in arbitrary dimensions. Using the standard formula for black hole entropy, we construct scenarios involving the merger of two black holes in which the entropy instantaneously decreases. Our construction involves a Kaluza-Klein compactification down to a dimension in which one of the Lovelock terms is topological. We discuss some open issues in the definition of the second law which might be used to compensate this entropy decrease.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2015

A Second Law for Higher Curvature Gravity

The Second Law of black hole thermodynamics is shown to hold for arbitrarily complicated theories of higher curvature gravity, so long as we allow only linearized perturbations to stationary black holes. Some ambiguities in Wald's Noether charge method are resolved. The increasing quantity turns out to be the same as the holographic entanglement entropy calculated by Dong. It is suggested that only the linearization of the higher-curvature Second Law is important, when consistently truncating a UV-complete quantum gravity theory.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2015

Proof of the Quantum Null Energy Condition

We prove the Quantum Null Energy Condition (QNEC), a lower bound on the stress tensor in terms of the second variation in a null direction of the entropy of a region. The QNEC arose previously as a consequence of the Quantum Focussing Conjecture, a proposal about quantum gravity. The QNEC itself does not involve gravity, so a proof within quantum field theory is possible. Our proof is somewhat nontrivial, suggesting that there may be alternative formulations of quantum field theory that make the QNEC more manifest. Our proof applies to free and superrenormalizable bosonic field theories, and to any points that lie on stationary null surfaces. An example is Minkowski space, where any point $p$ and null vector $k^a$ define a null plane $N$ (a Rindler horizon). Given any codimension-2 surface $Σ$ that contains $p$ and lies on $N$, one can consider the von Neumann entropy $S_\text{out}$ of the quantum state restricted to one side of $Σ$. A second variation $S_\text{out}^{\prime\prime}$ can be defined by deforming $Σ$ along $N$, in a small neighborhood of $p$ with area $\cal A$. The QNEC states that $\langle T_{kk}(p) \rangle \ge \frac{\hbar}{2π} \lim_{{\cal A}\to 0}S_\text{out}^{ \prime\prime}/{\cal A}$.

hep-th↗

arXiv2015

Anomalies of the Entanglement Entropy in Chiral Theories

We study entanglement entropy in theories with gravitational or mixed U(1) gauge-gravitational anomalies in two, four and six dimensions. In such theories there is an anomaly in the entanglement entropy: it depends on the choice of reference frame in which the theory is regulated. We discuss subtleties regarding regulators and entanglement entropies in anomalous theories. We then study the entanglement entropy of free chiral fermions and self-dual bosons and show that in sufficiently symmetric situations this entanglement anomaly comes from an imbalance in the flux of modes flowing through the boundary, controlled by familiar index theorems. In two and four dimensions we use anomalous Ward identities to find general expressions for the transformation of the entanglement entropy under a diffeomorphism. (In the case of a mixed anomaly there is an alternative presentation of the theory in which the entanglement entropy is not invariant under a U(1) gauge transformation. The free-field manifestation of this phenomenon involves a novel kind of fermion zero mode on a gravitational background with a twist in the normal bundle to the entangling surface.) We also study d-dimensional anomalous systems as the boundaries of d + 1 dimensional gapped Hall phases. Here the full system is non-anomalous, but the boundary anomaly manifests itself in a change in the entanglement entropy when the boundary metric is sheared relative to the bulk.

hep-th↗

arXiv2015

Geometric entropy and edge modes of the electromagnetic field

We calculate the vacuum entanglement entropy of Maxwell theory in a class of curved spacetimes by Kaluza-Klein reduction of the theory onto a two-dimensional base manifold. Using two-dimensional duality, we express the geometric entropy of the electromagnetic field as the entropy of a tower of scalar fields, constant electric and magnetic fluxes, and a contact term, whose leading order divergence was discovered by Kabat. The complete contact term takes the form of one negative scalar degree of freedom confined to the entangling surface. We show that the geometric entropy agrees with a statistical definition of entanglement entropy that includes edge modes: classical solutions determined by their boundary values on the entangling surface. This resolves a longstanding puzzle about the statistical interpretation of the contact term in the entanglement entropy. We discuss the implications of this negative term for black hole thermodynamics and the renormalization of Newton's constant.

hep-th↗

arXiv2015

Generalized second law at linear order for actions that are functions of Lovelock densities

In this article we consider the second law of black holes (and other causal horizons) in theories where the gravitational action is an arbitrary function of the Lovelock densities. We show that there exists an entropy which increases locally, for linearized perturbations to regular Killing horizons. In addition to a classical increase theorem, we also prove a generalized second law for semiclassical, minimally-coupled matter fields.

gr-qc↗