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arXiv:0802.0880 · Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields

Entanglement entropy in loop quantum gravity

William Donnelly

Published May 6, 2008• 81 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The entanglement entropy between quantum fields inside and outside a black hole horizon is a promising candidate for the microscopic origin of black hole entropy. We show that the entanglement entropy may be defined in loop quantum gravity, and compute its value for spin network states. The entanglement entropy for an arbitrary region of space is expressed as a sum over punctures where the spin network intersects the region's boundary. Our result agrees asymptotically with results previously obtained from the isolated horizon framework, and we give a justification for this agreement. We conclude by proposing a new method for studying corrections to the area law and its implications for quantum corrections to the gravitational action.

DOI
10.1103/physrevd.77.104006

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The entanglement entropy between quantum fields inside and outside a black hole horizon is a promising candidate for the microscopic origin of black hole entropy. We show that the entanglement entropy may be defined in loop quantum gravity, and compute its value for spin network states. The entanglement entropy for an arbitrary region of space is expressed as a sum over punctures where the spin network intersects the region's boundary. Our result agrees asymptotically with results previously obtained from the isolated horizon framework, and we give a justification for this agreement. We conclude by proposing a new method for studying corrections to the area law and its implications for quantum corrections to the gravitational action.
Abstract Black hole entropy is one of the few windows into the quantum aspects of gravitation, and its study over the years has highlighted the holographic nature of gravity. At the non-perturbative level in quantum gravity, promising explanations are being explored in terms of the entanglement entropy between regions of space. In the context of loop quantum gravity, this translates into an analysis of the correlations between the regions of the spin network states defining the quantum state of the geometry of space. In this paper, we explore a class of states, motivated by results in condensed matter physics, satisfying an area law for entanglement entropy and having non-trivial correlations. We highlight that entanglement comes from holonomy operators acting on loops crossing the boundary of the region.
We study a proposed statistical explanation for the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of a black hole in which entropy arises quantum-mechanically as a result of entanglement. Arguments for the identification of black hole entropy with entanglement entropy are reviewed in the framework of quantum field theory, emphasizing the role of renormalization and the need for a physical short-distance cutoff. \n \nOur main novel contribution is a calculation of entanglement entropy in loop quantum gravity. The kinematical Hilbert space and spin network states are introduced, and the entanglement entropy of these states is calculated using methods from quantum information theory. The entanglement entropy is compared with the density of states previously computed for isolated horizons in loop quantum gravity, and the two are found to agree up to a topological term. \n \nWe investigate a conjecture due to Sorkin that the entanglement entropy must be a monotonically increasing function of time under the assumption of causality. For a system described by a finite-dimensional Hilbert space, the conjecture is found to be trivial, and for a system described by an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space a counterexample is provided. \n \nFor quantum states with Euclidean symmetry, the area scaling of the entanglement entropy is shown to be equivalent to the strong additivity condition on the entropy. The strong additivity condition is naturally interpreted in information-theoretic terms as a continuous analog of the Markov property for a classical random variable. We explicitly construct states of a quantum field theory on the one-dimensional real line in which the area law is exactly satisfied.
The non-factorizing nature of the Hilbert space in Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) due to gauge invariance requires a generalized definition of entanglement entropy. This work employs the framework of von Neumann algebras to investigate the entanglement entropy in LQG. On a graph, the holonomy and flux operators within a region and on the boundary generate a non-factor type I von Neumann algebra, which is used to define the entanglement entropy for LQG states. This algebraic formalism is applied to ``fixed-area states''--superpositions of spin networks associated with a surface with a definite macroscopic area given by the LQG area spectrum. By maximizing the entropy, we derive a geometrical area law where the entanglement entropy is proportional to the area. In addition, we show that bulk entanglement can renormalize the area-law coefficient and produce logarithmic corrections. The results in this paper closely relate to LQG black hole entropy.
We reexamine the idea that the origin of black-hole entropy may lie in the entanglement of quantum fields between the inside and outside of the horizon. Motivated by the observation that certain modes of gravitational fluctuations in a black-hole background behave as scalar fields, we compute the entanglement entropy of such a field, by tracing over its degrees of freedom inside a sphere. We show that while this entropy is proportional to the area of the sphere when the field is in its ground state, a correction term proportional to a fractional power of area results when the field is in a superposition of ground and excited states. The area law is thus recovered for large areas. Further, we identify the location of the degrees of freedom that give rise to the above entropy.
Bell-network states are loop-quantum-gravity states that glue quantum polyhedra with entanglement. We present an algorithm and a code that evaluates the reduced density matrix of a Bell-network state and computes its entanglement entropy. In particular, we use our code for simple graphs to study properties of Bell-network states and to show that they are nontypical in the Hilbert space. Moreover, we investigate analytically Bell-network states on arbitrary finite graphs. We develop methods to compute the R\'enyi entropy of order p for a restriction of the state to an arbitrary region. In the uniform large-spin regime, we determine bounds on the entanglement entropy and show that it obeys an area law. Finally, we discuss the implications of our results for correlations of geometric observables.
We introduce a novel method for computing entanglement entropy across surfaces in Loop Quantum Gravity by employing techniques from quantum error correcting codes. In this construction, the redundancy encoded in the gauge invariant subspace is made manifest by embedding it in a larger Hilbert space. The enlarged Hilbert space of a surface does not factorize, which necessitates an algebraic formulation of the entanglement entropy using von Neumann algebras. Using this approach, we are able to reproduce the expected black hole entropy through the canonical ensemble. This includes a direct realization of the Ryu-Takayanagi formula, providing a first principles derivation of the black hole entropy within a kinematical framework of loop quantum gravity. The algebraic techniques developed in this work can be used to compute the entanglement entropy across arbitrary surfaces.