arXiv subjects

Caroline Lima

Publications and source records attributed to Caroline Lima.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Entanglement harvesting in conformal field theory

We study entanglement harvesting in general $d$-dimensional conformal field theories using pointlike Unruh-DeWitt detectors coupled to scalar primary operators. This extends standard harvesting protocols beyond free fields to interacting conformal theories and arbitrary spatial dimensions. We find that increasing the operator scaling dimension suppresses both negativity and mutual information, reflecting the faster decay of correlations. For holographic CFTs, we show that bulk effective field theory enables a separation between field-harvested and communication-mediated entanglement. We also derive asymptotic, closed-form approximations that agree well with numerical results.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

On sufficient conditions for holographic scattering

Holography implies scattering in the bulk can be mediated by entanglement on the boundary. The connected wedge theorem (CWT) of May, Penington, and Sorce is a concrete example where bulk scattering implies correlation between certain boundary regions. However the converse does not hold. We investigate a recent proposal of Leutheusser and Liu for a generalization of the CWT with converse. We prove the forward direction: having pairs of CFT ``input'' (and likewise ``output'') regions in a phase with connected entanglement wedge implies that a particular bulk subregion (the intersection of ``input'' and ``output'' entanglement wedges) is non-empty. We then establish a modified version of the proposal which has a converse, and identify counter-examples to the stronger conjecture.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

The Geodesics Less Traveled: Nonminimal RT Surfaces and Holographic Scattering

The connected wedge theorem states that in order to have a scattering process in the bulk, it is necessary to have $O(1/G_N)$ mutual information between certain "decision" regions in the boundary theory. While this large mutual information is not generally sufficient to imply scattering, arxiv:2404.15400 showed that for a certain class of geometries, bulk scattering is implied by a certain relation between two (possibly non-minimal) Ryu-Takayanagi surfaces. Here, we show that the 2-to-2 version of the theorem becomes an equivalence in pure AdS$_3$: large mutual information between appropriate boundary subregions is both necessary and sufficient for bulk scattering. This result allows us to extend the findings of arxiv:2404.15400 to a broader class of asymptotically AdS$_3$ spacetimes, which we illustrate with the spinning conical defect geometry. In contrast, we find that matter sources can disrupt this converse relation, and that the $n$-to-$n$ version of the theorem with $n>2$ lacks a converse even in the AdS$_3$ vacuum.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

Contextuality from the vacuum

Contextuality, a key resource for quantum advantage, describes systems in which the outcome of a measurement is not independent of other compatible measurements, in contrast to classical hidden-variable descriptions. We investigate the harvesting of contextuality from the vacuum of a quantum field using Unruh-DeWitt detectors. We show that localized interactions with the field can endow initially non-contextual detectors with contextuality with respect to Heisenberg-Weyl measurements, as quantified by contextual fraction. The harvested contextuality correlates with the emergence of Wigner function negativity, in agreement with known equivalences between these notions. Our results show that contextuality is a resource that can be extracted directly from the quantum vacuum and establish contextuality harvesting as a fundamental phenomenon in relativistic quantum information.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Semiclassical gravity beyond coherent states

We show that it is possible to still use semiclassical gravity together with quantum field theory beyond the regimes where the field state is coherent. In particular, we identify families of cat states (superposition of almost-distinguishable coherent states that have very non-classical features) for which the gravitational backreaction can be modeled by semiclassical gravity.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Unruh phenomena and thermalization for qudit detectors

We study Unruh phenomena for a qudit detector coupled to a quantized scalar field, comparing its response to that of a standard qubit-based Unruh-DeWitt detector. We show that there are limitations to the utility of the detailed balance condition as an indicator for Unruh thermality of higher-dimensional qudit detector models. This can be traced to the fact that a qudit has multiple possible transition channels between its energy levels, in contrast to the 2-level qubit model. We illustrate these limitations using two types of qutrit detector models based on the spin-1 representations of $SU(2)$ and the non-Hermitian generalization of the Pauli observables (the Heisenberg-Weyl operators).

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Harvesting entanglement from complex scalar and fermionic fields with linearly coupled particle detectors

We explore entanglement harvesting with particle detectors that couple linearly to non-Hermitian fields. Specifically, we analyze the case of particle detectors coupled to a complex scalar quantum field and to a spin 1/2 fermionic field. We find that the complex scalar model can be a good approximation for the fermionic model in the protocol of entanglement harvesting when the mass of the field is sufficiently large compared to the inverse interaction time. Moreover, we show that by taking advantage of the U(1) degree of freedom of a complex detector it is possible to increase the harvested negativity by up to two orders of magnitude when compared to the case of a real detector.

quant-ph↗