Effective entropy of quantum fields coupled with gravity

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Received: July 21, 2020 Accepted: August 19, 2020 Published: October 8, 2020

Effective entropy of quantum fields coupled with gravity a b

Department of Physics, University of California, Broida Hall, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, U.S.A. Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics, Stanford University, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, U.S.A.

E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract: Entanglement entropy, or von Neumann 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 replica calculation. The replicated theory is defined as a gravitational path integral with multiple copies of the original boundary conditions, 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. We show that, in absence of a large boundary like in AdS space case, it is essential to introduce ancilla that couples to the original system, in order for correctly characterizing quantum states and correlation functions in the random tensor network. Using the superdensity operator formalism, we study the system with ancilla and 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. Keywords: Black Holes, Models of Quantum Gravity ArXiv ePrint: 2007.02987

c The Authors. Open Access, Article funded by SCOAP3 .

https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP10(2020)052

JHEP10(2020)052

Xi Dong,a Xiao-Liang Qi,b Zhou Shangnanb and Zhenbin Yangb

Contents 1 Introduction

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2 Effective entropy in gravitational system 2.1 Overview of e