arXiv subjects

Xi Dong

Publications and source records attributed to Xi Dong.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2021

Real-time gravitational replicas: Formalism and a variational principle

This work is the first step in a two-part investigation of real-time replica wormholes. Here we study the associated real-time gravitational path integral and construct the variational principle that will define its saddle-points. We also describe the general structure of the resulting real-time replica wormhole saddles, setting the stage for construction of explicit examples. These saddles necessarily involve complex metrics, and thus are accessed by deforming the original real contour of integration. However, the construction of these saddles need not rely on analytic continuation, and our formulation can be used even in the presence of non-analytic boundary-sources. Furthermore, at least for replica- and CPT-symmetric saddles we show that the metrics may be taken to be real in regions spacelike separated from a so-called `splitting surface'. This feature is an important hallmark of unitarity in a field theory dual.

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arXiv2021

Holographic entanglement negativity and replica symmetry breaking

Since the work of Ryu and Takayanagi, deep connections between quantum entanglement and spacetime geometry have been revealed. The negative eigenvalues of the partial transpose of a bipartite density operator is a useful diagnostic of entanglement. In this paper, we discuss the properties of the associated entanglement negativity and its Rényi generalizations in holographic duality. We first review the definition of the Rényi negativities, which contain the familiar logarithmic negativity as a special case. We then study these quantities in the random tensor network model and rigorously derive their large bond dimension asymptotics. Finally, we study entanglement negativity in holographic theories with a gravity dual, where we find that Rényi negativities are often dominated by bulk solutions that break the replica symmetry. From these replica symmetry breaking solutions, we derive general expressions for Rényi negativities and their special limits including the logarithmic negativity. In fixed-area states, these general expressions simplify dramatically and agree precisely with our results in the random tensor network model. This provides a concrete setting for further studying the implications of replica symmetry breaking in holography.

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arXiv2020

An Alternative Method for Extracting the von Neumann Entropy from Renyi Entropies

An alternative method is presented for extracting the von Neumann entropy $-\operatorname{Tr} (ρ\ln ρ)$ from $\operatorname{Tr} (ρ^n)$ for integer $n$ in a quantum system with density matrix $ρ$. Instead of relying on direct analytic continuation in $n$, the method uses a generating function $-\operatorname{Tr} \{ ρ\ln [(1-z ρ) / (1-z)] \}$ of an auxiliary complex variable $z$. The generating function has a Taylor series that is absolutely convergent within $|z|<1$, and may be analytically continued in $z$ to $z = -\infty$ where it gives the von Neumann entropy. As an example, we use the method to calculate analytically the CFT entanglement entropy of two intervals in the small cross ratio limit, reproducing a result that Calabrese et al. obtained by direct analytic continuation in $n$. Further examples are provided by numerical calculations of the entanglement entropy of two intervals for general cross ratios, and of one interval at finite temperature and finite interval length.

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arXiv2020

Effective entropy of quantum fields coupled with gravity

Entanglement entropy quantifies the amount of uncertainty of a quantum state. For quantum fields in curved space, entanglement entropy of the quantum field theory degrees of freedom is well-defined for a fixed background geometry. In this paper, we propose a generalization of the quantum field theory entanglement entropy by including dynamical gravity. The generalized quantity named effective entropy, and its Renyi entropy generalizations, are defined by analytic continuation of a gravitational path integral on replica geometry with a co-dimension-$2$ brane at the boundary of region we are studying. We discuss different approaches to define the region in a gauge invariant way, and show that the effective entropy satisfies the quantum extremal surface formula. When the quantum fields carry a significant amount of entanglement, the quantum extremal surface can have a topology transition, after which an entanglement island region appears. Our result generalizes the Hubeny-Rangamani-Takayanagi formula of holographic entropy (with quantum corrections) to general geometries without asymptotic AdS boundary, and provides a more solid framework for addressing problems such as the Page curve of evaporating black holes in asymptotic flat spacetime. We apply the formula to two example systems, a closed two-dimensional universe and a four-dimensional maximally extended Schwarzchild black hole. We discuss the analog of the effective entropy in random tensor network models, which provides more concrete understanding of quantum information properties in general dynamical geometries. By introducing ancilla systems, we show how quantum information in the entanglement island can be reconstructed in a state-dependent and observer-dependent map. We study the closed universe (without spatial boundary) case and discuss how it is related to open universe.

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arXiv2020

Enhanced corrections near holographic entanglement transitions: a chaotic case study

Recent work found an enhanced correction to the entanglement entropy of a subsystem in a chaotic energy eigenstate. The enhanced correction appears near a phase transition in the entanglement entropy that happens when the subsystem size is half of the entire system size. Here we study the appearance of such enhanced corrections holographically. We show explicitly how to find these corrections in the example of chaotic eigenstates by summing over contributions of all bulk saddle point solutions, including those that break the replica symmetry. With the help of an emergent rotational symmetry, the sum over all saddle points is written in terms of an effective action for cosmic branes. The resulting Renyi and entanglement entropies are then naturally organized in a basis of fixed-area states and can be evaluated directly, showing an enhanced correction near holographic entanglement transitions. We comment on several intriguing features of our tractable example and discuss the implications for finding a convincing derivation of the enhanced corrections in other, more general holographic examples.

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arXiv2019

One-loop universality of holographic codes

Recent work showed holographic error correcting codes to have simple universal features at $O(1/G)$. In particular, states of fixed Ryu-Takayanagi (RT) area in such codes are associated with flat entanglement spectra indicating maximal entanglement between appropriate subspaces. We extend such results to one-loop order ($O(1)$ corrections) by controlling both higher-derivative corrections to the bulk effective action and dynamical quantum fluctuations below the cutoff. This result clarifies the relation between the bulk path integral and the quantum code, and implies that i) simple tensor network models of holography continue to match the behavior of holographic CFTs beyond leading order in $G$, ii) the relation between bulk and boundary modular Hamiltonians derived by Jafferis, Lewkowycz, Maldacena, and Suh holds as an operator equation on the code subspace and not just in code-subspace expectation values, and iii) the code subspace is invariant under an appropriate notion of modular flow. A final corollary requires interesting cancelations to occur in the bulk renormalization-group flow of holographic quantum codes. Intermediate technical results include showing the Lewkowycz-Maldacena computation of RT entropy to take the form of a Hamilton-Jacobi variation of the action with respect to boundary conditions, corresponding results for higher-derivative actions, and generalizations to allow RT surfaces with finite conical angles.

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arXiv2019

Flat entanglement spectra in fixed-area states of quantum gravity

We use the Einstein-Hilbert gravitational path integral to investigate gravitational entanglement at leading order $O(1/G)$. We argue that semiclassical states prepared by a Euclidean path integral have the property that projecting them onto a subspace in which the Ryu-Takayanagi or Hubeny-Rangamani-Takayanagi surface has definite area gives a state with a flat entanglement spectrum at this order in gravitational perturbation theory. This means that the reduced density matrix can be approximated as proportional to the identity to the extent that its Renyi entropies $S_n$ are independent of $n$ at this order. The $n$-dependence of $S_n$ in more general states then arises from sums over the RT/HRT-area, which are generally dominated by different values of this area for each $n$. This provides a simple picture of gravitational entanglement, bolsters the connection between holographic systems and tensor network models, clarifies the bulk interpretation of algebraic centers which arise in the quantum error-correcting description of holography, and strengthens the connection between bulk and boundary modular Hamiltonians described by Jafferis, Lewkowycz, Maldacena, and Suh.

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arXiv2019

Holographic Entropy Cone with Time Dependence in Two Dimensions

In holographic duality, if a boundary state has a geometric description that realizes the Ryu-Takayanagi proposal then its entanglement entropies must obey certain inequalities that together define the so-called holographic entropy cone. A large family of such inequalities have been proven under the assumption that the bulk geometry is static, using a method involving contraction maps. By using kinematic space techniques, we show that in two boundary (three bulk) dimensions, all entropy inequalities that can be proven in the static case by contraction maps must also hold in holographic states with time dependence.

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arXiv2019

Holographic Renyi Entropy at High Energy Density

We show that Renyi entropies of subregions can be used to distinguish when the entire system is in a microcanonical ensemble from when it is in a canonical ensemble, at least in theories holographically dual to gravity. Simple expressions are provided for these Renyi entropies in a particular thermodynamic limit with high energy density and fixed fractional size of the subregion. Holographically, the Renyi entropies are determined by the areas of cosmic branes inserted into the bulk spacetime. They differ between a microcanonical and a canonical ensemble because the two ensembles provide different boundary conditions for the gravitational theory under which cosmic branes lead to different backreacted geometries. This is in contrast to the von Neumann entropy which is more coarse-grained and does not differentiate microcanonical ensembles from canonical ensembles.

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arXiv2018

Entropy, Extremality, Euclidean Variations, and the Equations of Motion

We study the Euclidean gravitational path integral computing the Renyi entropy and analyze its behavior under small variations. We argue that, in Einstein gravity, the extremality condition can be understood from the variational principle at the level of the action, without having to solve explicitly the equations of motion. This set-up is then generalized to arbitrary theories of gravity, where we show that the respective entanglement entropy functional needs to be extremized. We also extend this result to all orders in Newton's constant $G_N$, providing a derivation of quantum extremality. Understanding quantum extremality for mixtures of states provides a generalization of the dual of the boundary modular Hamiltonian which is given by the bulk modular Hamiltonian plus the area operator, evaluated on the so-called modular extremal surface. This gives a bulk prescription for computing the relative entropies to all orders in $G_N$. We also comment on how these ideas can be used to derive an integrated version of the equations of motion, linearized around arbitrary states.

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arXiv2018

Modular Flow as a Disentangler

In holographic duality, the entanglement entropy of a boundary region is proposed to be dual to the area of an extremal codimension-2 surface that is homologous to the boundary region, known as the Hubeny-Rangamani-Takayanagi (HRT) surface. In this paper, we study when the HRT surfaces of two boundary subregions R, A are in the same Cauchy slice. This condition is necessary for the subregion-subregion mapping to be local for both subregions and for states to have a tensor network description. To quantify this, we study the area of a surface that is homologous to A and is extremal except at possible intersections with the HRT surface of R (minimizing over all such possible surfaces), which we call the constrained area. We give a boundary proposal for an upper bound of this quantity, a bound which is saturated when the constrained surface intersects the HRT surface of R at a constant angle. This boundary quantity is the minimum entropy of region A in a modular evolved state -- a state that has been evolved unitarily with the modular Hamiltonian of R. We can prove this formula in two boundary dimensions or when the modular Hamiltonian is local. This modular minimal entropy is a boundary quantity that probes bulk causality and, from this quantity, we can extract whether two HRT surfaces are in the future or past of each other. These entropies satisfy some inequalities reminiscent of strong subadditivity and can be used to remove certain corner divergences.

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arXiv2018

De Sitter Holography and Entanglement Entropy

We propose a new example of entanglement knitting spacetime together, satisfying a series of checks of the corresponding von Neumann and Renyi entropies. The conjectured dual of de Sitter in d+1 dimensions involves two coupled CFT sectors constrained by residual d-dimensional gravity. In the d=2 case, the gravitational constraints and the CFT spectrum are relatively tractable. We identify a finite portion of each CFT Hilbert space relevant for de Sitter. Its maximum energy level coincides with the transition to the universal Cardy behavior for theories with a large central charge and a sparse light spectrum, derived by Hartman, Keller, and Stoica. Significant interactions between the two CFTs, derived previously for other reasons, suggest a maximally mixed state upon tracing out one of the two sectors; we derive this by determining the holographic Renyi entropies. The resulting entanglement entropy matches the Gibbons-Hawking formula for de Sitter entropy, including the numerical coefficient. Finally, we interpret the Gibbons-Hawking horizon entropy in terms of the Ryu-Takayanagi entropy, and explore the time evolution of the entanglement entropy.

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arXiv2018

Phase transitions in 3D gravity and fractal dimension

We show that for three dimensional gravity with higher genus boundary conditions, if the theory possesses a sufficiently light scalar, there is a second order phase transition where the scalar field condenses. This three dimensional version of the holographic superconducting phase transition occurs even though the pure gravity solutions are locally AdS$_3$. This is in addition to the first order Hawking-Page-like phase transitions between different locally AdS$_3$ handlebodies. This implies that the Rényi entropies of holographic CFTs will undergo phase transitions as the Rényi parameter is varied, as long as the theory possesses a scalar operator which is lighter than a certain critical dimension. We show that this critical dimension has an elegant mathematical interpretation as the Hausdorff dimension of the limit set of a quotient group of AdS$_3$, and use this to compute it, analytically near the boundary of moduli space and numerically in the interior of moduli space. We compare this to a CFT computation generalizing recent work of Belin, Keller and Zadeh, bounding the critical dimension using higher genus conformal blocks, and find a surprisingly good match.

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arXiv2017

Shape Dependence of Holographic Rényi Entropy in General Dimensions

We present a holographic method for computing the response of Rényi entropies in conformal field theories to small shape deformations around a flat (or spherical) entangling surface. Our strategy employs the stress tensor one-point function in a deformed hyperboloid background and relates it to the coefficient in the two-point function of the displacement operator. We obtain explicit numerical results for $d=3,\dots,6$ spacetime dimensions, and also evaluate analytically the limits where the Rényi index approaches 1 and 0 in general dimensions. We use our results to extend the work of 1602.08493 and disprove a set of conjectures in the literature regarding the relations between the Rényi shape dependence and the conformal weight of the twist operator. We also extend our analysis beyond leading order in derivatives in the bulk theory by studying Gauss-Bonnet gravity.

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arXiv2017

Linearity of Holographic Entanglement Entropy

We consider the question of whether the leading contribution to the entanglement entropy in holographic CFTs is truly given by the expectation value of a linear operator as is suggested by the Ryu-Takayanagi formula. We investigate this property by computing the entanglement entropy, via the replica trick, in states dual to superpositions of macroscopically distinct geometries and find it consistent with evaluating the expectation value of the area operator within such states. However, we find that this fails once the number of semi-classical states in the superposition grows exponentially in the central charge of the CFT. Moreover, in certain such scenarios we find that the choice of surface on which to evaluate the area operator depends on the density matrix of the entire CFT. This nonlinearity is enforced in the bulk via the homology prescription of Ryu-Takayanagi. We thus conclude that the homology constraint is not a linear property in the CFT. We also discuss the existence of entropy operators in general systems with a large number of degrees of freedom.

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arXiv2016

The Gravity Dual of Renyi Entropy

A remarkable yet mysterious property of black holes is that their entropy is proportional to the horizon area. This area law inspired the holographic principle, which was later realized concretely in gauge/gravity duality. In this context, entanglement entropy is given by the area of a minimal surface in a dual spacetime. However, discussions of area laws have been constrained to entanglement entropy, whereas a full understanding of a quantum state requires Renyi entropies. Here we show that all Renyi entropies satisfy a similar area law in holographic theories and are given by the areas of dual cosmic branes. This geometric prescription is a one-parameter generalization of the minimal surface prescription for entanglement entropy. Applying this we provide the first holographic calculation of mutual Renyi information between two disks of arbitrary dimension. Our results provide a framework for efficiently studying Renyi entropies and understanding entanglement structures in strongly coupled systems and quantum gravity.

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arXiv2016

Deriving covariant holographic entanglement

We provide a gravitational argument in favour of the covariant holographic entanglement entropy proposal. In general time-dependent states, the proposal asserts that the entanglement entropy of a region in the boundary field theory is given by a quarter of the area of a bulk extremal surface in Planck units. The main element of our discussion is an implementation of an appropriate Schwinger-Keldysh contour to obtain the reduced density matrix (and its powers) of a given region, as is relevant for the replica construction. We map this contour into the bulk gravitational theory, and argue that the saddle point solutions of these replica geometries lead to a consistent prescription for computing the field theory Renyi entropies. In the limiting case where the replica index is taken to unity, a local analysis suffices to show that these saddles lead to the extremal surfaces of interest. We also comment on various properties of holographic entanglement that follow from this construction.

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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.

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