Reports in Advances of Physical Sciences Vol. 4, No. 1 (2020) 1940001 (19 pages) #.c The Author(s) DOI: 10.1142/S2424942419400012
Topological Entanglement Entropy of Black Hole Interiors
Eric Howard Centre for Quantum Engineering Department of Physics and Astronomy Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia Centre for Quantum Dynamics Gri±th University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia [email protected]; eric.howard@griffith.edu.au
Received 13 October 2019 Accepted 19 January 2020 Published 19 February 2020
Recent theoretical progress shows that (2 þ 1) black hole solution manifests long-range topo- logical quantum entanglement similar to exotic non-Abelian excitations with fractional quan- tum statistics. In topologically ordered systems, there is a deep connection between physics of the bulk and that at the boundaries. Boundary terms play an important role in explaining the black hole entropy in general. We ¯nd several common properties between BTZ black holes and the Quantum Hall e®ect in (2 þ 1)-dimensional bulk/boundary theories. We calculate the topological entanglement entropy of a (2 þ 1) black hole and recover the Bekenstein–Hawking entropy, showing that black hole entropy and topological entanglement entropy are related. Using Chern–Simons and Liouville theories, we ¯nd that long-range entanglement describes the interior geometry of a black hole and identify it with the boundary entropy as the bond required by the connectivity of spacetime, gluing the short-range entanglement described by the area law. The IR bulk–UV boundary correspondence can be realized as a UV low-excitation theory on the bulk matching the IR long-range excitations on the boundary theory. Several aspects of the current ¯ndings are discussed. Rep. Adv. Phys. Sci. 2020.04. Downloaded from www.worldscientific.com Keywords: Black hole interior; entanglement entropy; Bekenstein–Hawking entropy; BTZ black hole; area law.
1. Introduction Since its discovery in 1992, the BTZ black hole solution1 has been used to model
by MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY on 03/08/21. Re-use and distribution is strictly not permitted, except for Open Access articles. realistic black holes, leading to the discovery that higher-dimensional black hole thermodynamics may be studied in terms of BTZ physics. Searching for a quantum theory of gravity remains a longstanding open problem in theoretical physics. However, the goal of ¯nding such a consistent theory still
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remains elusive. The strong connection between thermodynamics and black hole physics has been found successful in searching for a complete quantum gravity theory, leading to new ideas and vital developments in this ¯eld. Speci¯cally, without adding any matter degrees of freedom, quantum gravity alone cannot account for the microscopic entropy of black holes. The works of Bekenstein, Hawking and others showed that black holes are endowed with thermodynamic properties such as en- tropy and temperature, leading to the Bekenstein–Hawking area law. The formula caused a signi¯cant impact in theoretical physics, leading to the discovery of the holographic nature of quantum gravity.
The Bekenstein–Hawking entropy SBH, Area of horizon SBH ¼ ; ð1Þ 4GN describes the gravitational entropy through the degeneracy of quantum ¯eld theory in microscopic description. In the near-horizon limit, AdS–CFT correspondence, a (d þ 1)-dimensional conformal ¯eld theory (CFTdþ1) is found equivalent to a gravity theory on (d þ 2)-dimensional AdSdþ2 space, living on the boundary. The origin of entropy would be hidden behind the quantum microstates associ- ated with the black hole horizon. The Bekenstein–Hawking formula (1) also matches the microscopic entropy of strings, D-branes and their excitations. Current progress about the microscopic origin of black hole entropy, renormalization, black hole in- formation paradox, holographic principle, emergent gravity and the connection to entanglement has its deep origins in black hole thermodynamics. The bulk–boundary correspondence and the holographic properties are a result of the AdS–CFT corre- spondence. Signi¯cant progress has been recently made in providing a holographic approach for particular ideas from condensed matter physics. We investigate the interface between high-energy physics and condensed matter physics with signi¯- cance for holographic principle. It is accepted that the holographic principle is ac- tually a key ingredient to unifying quantum and gravity into a consistent framework.
Rep. Adv. Phys. Sci. 2020.04. Downloaded from www.worldscientific.com If gravity has indeed a holographic nature, the radial direction is strongly connected to a scale of renormalization group (RG) °ow of the dual theory. Conveniently, if classical spacetime is found to fundamentally emerge from an underlying quantum layer, a signi¯cant and robust insight into the quantum nature of spacetime would be provided. If entanglement is indeed the fabric of spacetime, general relativity can be pictured as a long-range theory encoding the quantum information °ow of the underlying microscopic degrees of freedom. Going further, by MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY on 03/08/21. Re-use and distribution is strictly not permitted, except for Open Access articles. tools from many-body physics like entanglement renormalization and holographic gauge/gravity duality or other ideas from quantum information theory trying to describe quantum-critical points were brought into the picture. Some quantum ¯eld theories without gravity were found to be dual to theories of quantum gravity in a higher-dimensional bulk geometry. Gravity has a topological nature because any observable is coordinate-invariant. In gravity, local di®eomorphisms are gauge symmetries and when reaching in¯nity
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they become global symmetries. Gauge invariance is a di®eomorphism invariance, therefore local operators are not gauge-invariant as there are no preferred coordi- nates. In (2 þ 1)-dimensions, the metric is independent of any matter distribution and locally invariant. A di®eomorphism-invariant theory of a manifold is described by a quantum ¯eld theory on the boundary, rather than using the interior local degrees of freedom. In this context, gravity could be emergent from long-distance connections of the ground state of a topologically ordered highly entangled ¯eld theory which is close to a quantum-critical point. The long-range correlations behind the emergence of the di®eomorphism symmetries in the gravitational theory are manifested in the degeneracy of the ground state as a function of genus. The holographic principle brings a geometrical interpretation of several concepts in strongly coupled ¯eld theories and a fresh perspective on particular systems for which the perturbative theory remains ine®ective. An insightful connection between holography and entanglement renormalization led to a full holographic picture of the spacetime, where the ¯eld theory observables are described by information encoded geometrically. The holographic principle should contain the complete information about a local coarse-grained description of the dual theory. In this sense, the renormalization group °ow and the energy scale may be the true underlying cause of the emergent holographic dimension. The correspondence between the RG °ow in the ¯eld theory and the radial dimension backed up by the holographic principle still remains unknown. If we take into account the long-range nature of gravitational interaction and the asymptotic nature of the spacetime metric, black hole information should involve long-range correlations that are coded in the structure of spacetime. The UV–IR correspondence implies that a greater depth in the bulk would correspond to a coarse graining structure in the ¯eld theory with a UV cut-o® dual in the bulk to a large radial cut-o®. The deep bulk geometry is described by non-local observables at progressively larger distances on the boundary and dual to the infrared energy scales. There is a strong connection between the non-local observables and the bulk depth,
Rep. Adv. Phys. Sci. 2020.04. Downloaded from www.worldscientific.com with deep consequences for understanding the causal structure of the space-time. In order to explore the holographic origin of gravity, a further information-theoretic interpretation of the ¯eld theory on the boundary in the dual-¯eld theory would be necessary.
2. The Topological Entanglement Entropy
by MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY on 03/08/21. Re-use and distribution is strictly not permitted, except for Open Access articles. The concept of geometric entanglement entropy links the microscopic structure of spacetime to entanglement. Ryu and Takayanagi found a holographic derivation of the entanglement entropy in quantum (conformal) ¯eld theories from AdS–CFT correspondence. We are here interested in understanding the entropy of the interior of a black hole employing (2 þ 1) AdS spacetime. Let us divide a region of space into two quantum subsystems A and B, where A is the spacetime region inside a black hole, and B quanti¯es the space outside of A,
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where an observer is located, outside the horizon. A and B are partitions of a larger system that is assumed to be in a pure quantum state. The quantum state of the subsystem A is de¯ned by the reduced density matrix A, which is obtained by tracing out the information contained in the subsystem B that describes the rest of the system. The density matrix of A is A ¼ trBð Þ, with as the ground state of the quantum system. The trace is taken over all states of the complement B. SB is the entropy of an observer who is only accessible to the region B but does not receive any communication from A. The information is lost as it becomes traced out (or smeared out) on the outside. The von Neumann entropy SA ¼ trð A log AÞ depicts the total entanglement between the regions A and B. The von Neumann entropy is su±cient to quantify the entanglement of a system with a small ¯nite number of degrees of freedom. However, the entanglement entropy for a system with an in¯nite number of degrees of freedom is not very well understood. Topological systems do not have local degrees of freedom at all, and their non- local degrees of freedom are only in topological, geometry-independent relation with each other. A quantum Hall system is a gapped state, whose non-local excitations only possess statistical interactions and it is therefore a topological system. The scale-independent part of the von Neumann entropy is topological, therefore it does not depend on the geometry of the partition. Entanglement is a form of quantum correlation between particles that displays unique properties like topological order when a large number of particles are entangled in a non-trivial way. Kitaev found an explicit connection between entanglement entropy and topological order in two dimensions. Entanglement takes part in several condensed matter processes, like quantum-critical points, quantum spin liquids or topologically ordered phases of matter. The entanglement entropy was successfully used in low-dimensional quan- tum many-body theory to study the nature of quantum-critical systems. The cor- relation functions in a topological system remain invariant at distances longer than the distance and energies lower than the energy scale. The formula for entanglement
Rep. Adv. Phys. Sci. 2020.04. Downloaded from www.worldscientific.com entropy,
SA ¼ trA A log A; A ¼ trBj ih j; ð2Þ
shows how highly correlated a wave function j i is. Beyond the Ginzburg–Landau paradigm, many-body wave functions of quantum ground states are described by their pattern of entanglement rather than their
by MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY on 03/08/21. Re-use and distribution is strictly not permitted, except for Open Access articles. symmetry breaking structure. Entanglement entropy becomes useful here, explaining the topological structure embedded in the ground state wave function. In condensed matter physics, the quantum phases of matter are described by their speci¯c pattern of entanglement encoded in many-body wave functions of ground states. The ground state degeneracy on a higher-genus surface and the braiding properties of quasi- particle excitations are important because the ground state of the underlying medium is strongly correlated.
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A topological phase in two dimensions is a translationally-invariant ground state of matter that does not break spontaneously the symmetries of the system. The excitation spectrum is gapped. The ground state on a manifold with a non-trivial topology (torus) has a degeneracy that cannot be changed by the action of a local perturbation. For low energies and long distances the wave function of a set of excitations does not depend on the positions of the excitations, therefore is non-local. The path integral or partition function of such a topological ¯eld theory is inde- pendent of the metric of the space, therefore topological. The best understood topological quantum ¯eld theory is the Chern–Simons gauge theory in (2 þ 1)-dimensions. Gravity in (2 þ 1)-dimensions contains no propagating local degrees of freedom and in that sense its gauge constraints can be solved exactly. In (2 þ 1)-dimensions, General Relativity can be rewritten as a trivial Chern–Simons gauge theory that is able to embed the infrared properties of topologically ordered quantum-critical systems. The topological interactions of the ground state wave function are included. The ground state degeneracy of the system will depend on the global spacetime topology. The non-local behavior of the excitations of a topological phase depends on the braiding properties of the worldlines which also depend on the wave functions. The interior of black holes can be in this way modeled using patterns of long-range quantum entanglement, directly correlated to the braiding operations from non-Abelian statistics. Topological entanglement entropy will quantify the long-range quantum order. The entanglement entropy will be directly dependent on the degrees of freedom. A topo- logical phase shows emergent universal properties like anyon quasiparticle excitations, dependent on the non-local topological state of the many-body system, exhibiting exotic braiding exchange statistics and remaining robust to any local perturbations. A topo- logical state of matter has a speci¯c topological invariant with di®erent values in dif- ferent states, which can be computed from the ground state wave function. The excitations with non-Abelian statistics are described by multi-dimensional representa- tions of the braid group in multi-dimensional Hilbert spaces. Topological insulators,
Rep. Adv. Phys. Sci. 2020.04. Downloaded from www.worldscientific.com superconductors, Weyl or Dirac semi-metals, integer and fractional quantum Hall states and spin liquids are examples of topological states of matter. In a gapped system where low energies are explained by a topological ¯eld theory, like ð2 þ 1Þ-dimensional condensed matter systems, the entanglement entropy pro- vides important clues about the ground state. It is di±cult to calculate topological entropy in a holographic theory. In the absence of the Chern–Simons theory, for pure Yang–Mills in (2 þ 1)-dimensions the topological entropy vanishes. For non-trivial by MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY on 03/08/21. Re-use and distribution is strictly not permitted, except for Open Access articles. results, Chern–Simons interaction is required. The gapless boundary modes of a (2 þ 1)-dimensional quantum theory are ef- fectively a (1 þ 1)-dimensional system and are conformal-invariant. The boundary modes and the bulk modes are in one-to-one correspondence therefore da also applies to the bulk states. Consider a disk A (genus 0) in (2 þ 1)-dimensions, with a smooth boundary of length L in the in¯nite plane. The interior of the black hole described by the region A
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has a disk topology of length L. The topological entanglement entropy is a universal characteristic of the many-body ground state and 0.In(2 þ 1)-dimensions, topological entanglement entropy is described by the modular matrix of a two- dimensional conformal ¯eld theory. Similarly, in a gapped 2D many-body system split into two regions A and B with smooth boundaries, the entanglement entropy of the ground state of A [ B should be proportional to the boundary between A and B. For a topologically ordered system, the ground state wave function of a topological phase, split into the regions A and B, has the entanglement entropy