arXiv subjects

Robert C. Myers

Publications and source records attributed to Robert C. Myers.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Holographic Complexity in dS$_{d+1}$

We study the CV, CA, and CV2.0 approaches to holographic complexity in $(d+1)$-dimensional de Sitter spacetime. We find that holographic complexity and corresponding growth rate presents universal behaviour for all three approaches. In particular, the holographic complexity exhibits `hyperfast' growth [arXiv:2109.14104] and appears to diverge with a universal power law at a (finite) critical time. We introduce a cutoff surface to regulate this divergence, and the subsequent growth of the holographic complexity is linear in time.

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arXiv2020

Quantum Extremal Islands Made Easy, PartIII: Complexity on the Brane

We examine holographic complexity in the doubly holographic model introduced in [arXiv:2006.04851][arXiv:2010.00018] to study quantum extremal islands. We focus on the holographic complexity=volume (CV) proposal for boundary subregions in the island phase. Exploiting the Fefferman-Graham expansion of the metric and other geometric quantities near the brane, we derive the leading contributions to the complexity and interpret these in terms of the generalized volume of the island derived from the induced higher-curvature gravity action on the brane. Motivated by these results, we propose a generalization of the CV proposal for higher curvature theories of gravity. Further, we provide two consistency checks of our proposal by studying Gauss-Bonnet gravity and f(R) gravity in the bulk.

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arXiv2020

Quantum Extremal Islands Made Easy, Part II: Black Holes on the Brane

We discuss holographic models of extremal and non-extremal black holes in contact with a bath in d dimensions, based on a brane world model introduced in arXiv:2006.04851. The main benefit of our setup is that it allows for a high degree of analytic control as compared to previous work in higher dimensions. We show that the appearance of quantum extremal islands in those models is a consequence of the well-understood phase transition of RT surfaces, and does not make any direct reference to ensemble averaging. For non-extremal black holes the appearance of quantum extremal islands has the right behaviour to avoid the information paradox in any dimension. We further show that for these models the calculation of the full Page curve is possible in any dimension. The calculation reduces to numerically solving two ODEs. In the case of extremal black holes in higher dimensions, we find no quantum extremal islands for a wide range of parameters. In two dimensions, our results agree with arXiv:1910.11077 at leading order; however a finite UV cutoff introduced by the brane results in subleading corrections. For example, these corrections result in the quantum extremal surfaces moving further outward from the horizon, and shifting the Page transition to a slightly earlier time.

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arXiv2020

Quantum Extremal Islands Made Easy, Part I: Entanglement on the Brane

Recent progress in our understanding of the black hole information paradox has lead to a new prescription for calculating entanglement entropies, which involves special subsystems in regions where gravity is dynamical, called \textit{quantum extremal islands}. We present a simple holographic framework where the emergence of quantum extremal islands can be understood in terms of the standard Ryu-Takayanagi prescription, used for calculating entanglement entropies in the boundary theory. Our setup describes a $d$-dimensional boundary CFT coupled to a ($d$-1)-dimensional defect, which are dual to global AdS${}_{d+1}$ containing a codimension-one brane. Through the Randall-Sundrum mechanism, graviton modes become localized at the brane, and in a certain parameter regime, an effective description of the brane is given by Einstein gravity on an AdS${}_d$ background coupled to two copies of the boundary CFT. Within this effective description, the standard RT formula implies the existence of quantum extremal islands in the gravitating region, whenever the RT surface crosses the brane. This indicates that islands are a universal feature of effective theories of gravity and need not be tied to the presence of black holes.

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arXiv2020

Evaporating Black Holes Coupled to a Thermal Bath

We study the doubly holographic model of [arXiv:1908.10996] in the situation where a black hole in two-dimensional JT gravity theory is coupled to an auxiliary bath system at arbitrary finite temperature. Depending on the initial temperature of the black hole relative to the bath temperature, the black hole can lose mass by emitting Hawking radiation, stay in equilibrium with the bath or gain mass by absorbing thermal radiation from the bath. In all of these scenarios, a unitary Page curve is obtained by applying the usual prescription for holographic entanglement entropy and identifying the quantum extremal surface for the generalized entropy, using both analytical and numeric calculations. As the application of the entanglement wedge reconstruction, we further investigate the reconstruction of the black hole interior from a subsystem containing the Hawking radiation. We examine the roles of the Hawking radiation and also the purification of the thermal bath in this reconstruction.

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arXiv2020

Information Flow in Black Hole Evaporation

Recently, new holographic models of black hole evaporation have given fresh insights into the information paradox [arXiv:1905.08255, arXiv:1905.08762, arXiv:1908.10996]. In these models, the black hole evaporates into an auxiliary bath space after a quantum quench, wherein the holographic theory and the bath are joined. One particularly exciting development is the appearance of "ER=EPR"-like wormholes in the (doubly) holographic model of [arXiv:1908.10996]. At late times, the entanglement wedge of the bath includes the interior of the black hole. In this paper, we employ both numerical and analytic methods to study how information about the black hole interior is encoded in the Hawking radiation. In particular, we systematically excise intervals from the bath from the system and study the corresponding Page transition. Repeating this process ad infinitum, we end up with a fractal structure on which the black hole interior is encoded, implementing the uberholography protocol of [arXiv:1612.00017].

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arXiv2020

Aspects of The First Law of Complexity

We investigate the first law of complexity proposed in arXiv:1903.04511, i.e., the variation of complexity when the target state is perturbed, in more detail. Based on Nielsen's geometric approach to quantum circuit complexity, we find the variation only depends on the end of the optimal circuit. We apply the first law to gain new insights into the quantum circuits and complexity models underlying holographic complexity. In particular, we examine the variation of the holographic complexity for both the complexity=action and complexity=volume conjectures in perturbing the AdS vacuum with coherent state excitations of a free scalar field. We also examine the variations of circuit complexity produced by the same excitations for the free scalar field theory in a fixed AdS background. In this case, our work extends the existing treatment of Gaussian coherent states to properly include the time dependence of the complexity variation. We comment on the similarities and differences of the holographic and QFT results.

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arXiv2020

The First Law of Complexity

We investigate the variation of holographic complexity for two nearby target states. Based on Nielsen's geometric approach, we find the variation only depends on the end point of the optimal trajectory, a result which we designate the first law of complexity. As an example, we examine the complexity=action conjecture when the AdS vacuum is perturbed by a scalar field excitation, which corresponds to a coherent state. Remarkably, the gravitational contributions completely cancel and the final variation reduces to a boundary term coming entirely from the scalar field action. Hence the null boundary of Wheeler-DeWitt patch appears to act like the "end of the quantum circuit".

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arXiv2019

Complexity of Mixed States in QFT and Holography

We study the complexity of Gaussian mixed states in a free scalar field theory using the 'purification complexity'. The latter is defined as the lowest value of the circuit complexity, optimized over all possible purifications of a given mixed state. We argue that the optimal purifications only contain the essential number of ancillary degrees of freedom necessary in order to purify the mixed state. We also introduce the concept of 'mode-by-mode purifications' where each mode in the mixed state is purified separately and examine the extent to which such purifications are optimal. We explore the purification complexity for thermal states of a free scalar QFT in any number of dimensions, and for subregions of the vacuum state in two dimensions. We compare our results to those found using the various holographic proposals for the complexity of subregions. We find a number of qualitative similarities between the two in terms of the structure of divergences and the presence of a volume law. We also examine the 'mutual complexity' in the various cases studied in this paper.

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arXiv2019

Comments on Holographic Complexity

We study two recent conjectures for holographic complexity: the complexity=action conjecture and the complexity=volume conjecture. In particular, we examine the structure of the UV divergences appearing in these quantities, and show that the coefficients can be written as local integrals of geometric quantities in the boundary. We also consider extending these conjectures to evaluate the complexity of the mixed state produced by reducing the pure global state to a specific subregion of the boundary time slice. The UV divergences in this subregion complexity have a similar geometric structure, but there are also new divergences associated with the geometry of the surface enclosing the boundary region of interest. We discuss possible implications arising from the geometric nature of these UV divergences.

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arXiv2019

Complexity and entanglement for thermofield double states

Motivated by holographic complexity proposals as novel probes of black hole spacetimes, we explore circuit complexity for thermofield double (TFD) states in free scalar quantum field theories using the Nielsen approach. For TFD states at t = 0, we show that the complexity of formation is proportional to the thermodynamic entropy, in qualitative agreement with holographic complexity proposals. For TFD states at t > 0, we demonstrate that the complexity evolves in time and saturates after a time of the order of the inverse temperature. The latter feature, which is in contrast with the results of holographic proposals, is due to the Gaussian nature of the TFD state of the free bosonic QFT. A novel technical aspect of our work is framing complexity calculations in the language of covariance matrices and the associated symplectic transformations, which provide a natural language for dealing with Gaussian states. Furthermore, for free QFTs in 1+1 dimension, we compare the dynamics of circuit complexity with the time dependence of the entanglement entropy for simple bipartitions of TFDs. We relate our results for the entanglement entropy to previous studies on non-equilibrium entanglement evolution following quenches. We also present a new analytic derivation of a logarithmic contribution due to the zero momentum mode in the limit of vanishing mass for a subsystem containing a single degree of freedom on each side of the TFD and argue why a similar logarithmic growth should be present for larger subsystems.

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arXiv2018

Holographic Complexity Equals Which Action?

We revisit the complexity$=$action proposal for charged black holes. We investigate the complexity for a dyonic black hole, and we find the surprising feature that the late-time growth is sensitive to the ratio between electric and magnetic charges. In particular, the late-time growth rate vanishes when the black hole carries only a magnetic charge. If the dyonic black hole is perturbed by a light shock wave, a similar feature appears for the switchback effect, e.g., it is absent for purely magnetic black holes. We then show how the inclusion of a surface term to the action can put the electric and magnetic charges on an equal footing, or more generally change the value of the late-time growth rate. Next, we investigate how the causal structure influences the late-time growth with and without the surface term for charged black holes in a family of Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton theories. Finally, we connect the previous discussion to the complexity=action proposal for the two-dimensional Jackiw-Teitelboim theory. Since the two-dimensional theory is obtained by a dimensional reduction from Einstein-Maxwell theory in higher dimensions in a near-extremal and near-horizon limit, the choices of parent action and parent background solution determine the behaviour of holographic complexity in two dimensions.

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arXiv2018

Holographic second laws of black hole thermodynamics

Recently, it has been shown that for out-of-equilibrium systems, there are additional constraints on thermodynamical evolution besides the ordinary second law. These form a new family of second laws of thermodynamics, which are equivalent to the monotonicity of quantum Rényi divergences. In black hole thermodynamics, the usual second law is manifest as the area increase theorem. Hence one may ask if these additional laws imply new restrictions for gravitational dynamics, such as for out-of-equilibrium black holes? Inspired by this question, we study these constraints within the AdS/CFT correspondence. First, we show that the Rényi divergence can be computed via a Euclidean path integral for a certain class of excited CFT states. Applying this construction to the boundary CFT, the Rényi divergence is evaluated as the renormalized action for a particular bulk solution of a minimally coupled gravity-scalar system. Further, within this framework, we show that there exist transitions which are allowed by the traditional second law, but forbidden by the additional thermodynamical constraints. We speculate on the implications of our findings.

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arXiv2018

Circuit Complexity for Coherent States

We examine the circuit complexity of coherent states in a free scalar field theory, applying Nielsen's geometric approach as in [1]. The complexity of the coherent states have the same UV divergences as the vacuum state complexity and so we consider the finite increase of the complexity of these states over the vacuum state. One observation is that generally, the optimal circuits introduce entanglement between the normal modes at intermediate stages even though our reference state and target states are not entangled in this basis. We also compare our results from Nielsen's approach with those found using the Fubini-Study method of [2]. For general coherent states, we find that the complexities, as well as the optimal circuits, derived from these two approaches, are different.

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arXiv2018

Probing trihedral corner entanglement for Dirac fermions

We investigate the universal information contained in the Renyi entanglement entropies for a free massless Dirac fermion in three spatial dimensions. Using numerical calculations on the lattice, we examine the case where the entangling boundary contains trihedral corners. The entropy contribution arising from these corners grows logarithmically in the entangled subsystem's size with a universal coefficient. Our numerical results provide evidence that this logarithmic coefficient has a simple structure determined by two universal functions characterizing the underlying critical theory and the geometry of the corner. This form is similar to that of the analogous coefficient appearing for smooth entangling surfaces. Furthermore, our results support the idea that one of the geometric factors in the corner coefficient is topological in nature and related to the Euler characteristic of the boundary, in direct analogy to the case of the smooth surface. We discuss implications, including the possibility that one can use trihedral corner contributions to the Renyi entropy to determine both of the universal central charges of the underlying critical theory.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2018

Circuit complexity in quantum field theory

Motivated by recent studies of holographic complexity, we examine the question of circuit complexity in quantum field theory. We provide a quantum circuit model for the preparation of Gaussian states, in particular the ground state, in a free scalar field theory for general dimensions. Applying the geometric approach of Nielsen to this quantum circuit model, the complexity of the state becomes the length of the shortest geodesic in the space of circuits. We compare the complexity of the ground state of the free scalar field to the analogous results from holographic complexity, and find some surprising similarities.

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arXiv2018

Holographic Complexity in Vaidya Spacetimes II

In this second part of the study initiated in arxiv:1804.07410, we investigate holographic complexity for eternal black hole backgrounds perturbed by shock waves, with both the complexity$=$action (CA) and complexity$=$volume (CV) proposals. In particular, we consider Vaidya geometries describing a thin shell of null fluid with arbitrary energy falling in from one of the boundaries of a two-sided AdS-Schwarzschild spacetime. We demonstrate how known properties of complexity, such as the switchback effect for light shocks, as well as analogous properties for heavy ones, are imprinted in the complexity of formation and in the full time evolution of complexity. Following our discussion in arxiv:1804.07410, we find that in order to obtain the expected properties of the complexity, the inclusion of a particular counterterm on the null boundaries of the Wheeler-DeWitt patch is required for the CA proposal.

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arXiv2018

Holographic Complexity in Vaidya Spacetimes I

We examine holographic complexity in time-dependent Vaidya spacetimes with both the complexity$=$volume (CV) and complexity$=$action (CA) proposals. We focus on the evolution of the holographic complexity for a thin shell of null fluid, which collapses into empty AdS space and forms a (one-sided) black hole. In order to apply the CA approach, we introduce an action principle for the null fluid which sources the Vaidya geometries, and we carefully examine the contribution of the null shell to the action. Further, we find that adding a particular counterterm on the null boundaries of the Wheeler-DeWitt patch is essential if the gravitational action is to properly describe the complexity of the boundary state. For both the CV proposal and the CA proposal (with the extra boundary counterterm), the late time limit of the growth rate of the holographic complexity for the one-sided black hole is precisely the same as that found for an eternal black hole.

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