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arXiv:1606.00621 · Journal of High Energy Physics

Exploring the tensor networks/AdS correspondence

Arpan Bhattacharyya, Zhe-Shen Gao, Ling-Yan Hung, Sinong Liu

Published Aug 1, 2016• 54 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In this paper we study the recently proposed tensor networks/AdS correspondence. We found that the Coxeter group is a useful tool to describe tensor networks in a negatively curved space. Studying generic tensor network populated by perfect tensors, we find that the physical wave function generically do not admit any connected correlation functions of local operators. To remedy the problem, we assume that wavefunctions admitting such semi-classical gravitational interpretation are composed of tensors close to, but not exactly perfect tensors. Computing corrections to the connected two point correlation functions, we find that the leading contribution is given by structures related to geodesics connecting the operators inserted at the boundary physical dofs. Such considerations admit generalizations at least to three point functions. This is highly suggestive of the emergence of the analogues of Witten diagrams in the tensor network. The perturbations alone however do not give the right entanglement spectrum. Using the Coxeter construction, we also constructed the tensor network counterpart of the BTZ black hole, by orbifolding the discrete lattice on which the network resides. We found that the construction naturally reproduces some of the salient features of the BTZ black hole, such as the appearance of RT surfaces that could wrap the horizon, depending on the size of the entanglement region A.

DOI
10.1007/jhep08(2016)086

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In this paper we study the recently proposed tensor networks/AdS correspondence. We found that the Coxeter group is a useful tool to describe tensor networks in a negatively curved space. Studying generic tensor network populated by perfect tensors, we find that the physical wave function generically do not admit any connected correlation functions of local operators. To remedy the problem, we assume that wavefunctions admitting such semi-classical gravitational interpretation are composed of tensors close to, but not exactly perfect tensors. Computing corrections to the connected two point correlation functions, we find that the leading contribution is given by structures related to geodesics connecting the operators inserted at the boundary physical dofs. Such considerations admit generalizations at least to three point functions. This is highly suggestive of the emergence of the analogues of Witten diagrams in the tensor network. The perturbations alone however do not give the right entanglement spectrum. Using the Coxeter construction, we also constructed the tensor network counterpart of the BTZ black hole, by orbifolding the discrete lattice on which the network resides. We found that the construction naturally reproduces some of the salient features of the BTZ black hole, such as the appearance of RT surfaces that could wrap the horizon, depending on the size of the entanglement region A.
Holographic tensor networks serve as toy models for the Anti-de Sitter/Conformal Field Theory (AdS/CFT) correspondence, capturing many of its essential features in a concrete manner. However, existing holographic tensor network models remain far from a complete theory of quantum gravity. A key obstacle is their discrete structure, which only approximates the semi-classical geometry of gravity in a qualitative sense. In \cite{Lin:2024dho}, it was shown that a network of partial-entanglement-entropy (PEE) threads, which are bulk geodesics with a specific density distribution, generates a perfect tessellation of AdS space. Moreover, such PEE-network tessellations can be constructed for more highly symmetric geometries using the Crofton formula. In this paper, we assign a quantum state to each vertex in the PEE network and develop several holographic tensor network models: (1) the factorized PEE tensor network, which takes the form of a tensor product of EPR pairs; (2) the HaPPY-like PEE tensor network constructed from perfect tensors; and (3) the random PEE tensor network. In all these models, we reproduce the exact Ryu-Takayanagi formula by showing that the minimal number of cuts along a homologous surface in the network exactly equals the area of that surface.
Tensor networks provide a natural framework for exploring holographic duality because they obey entanglement area laws. They have been used to construct explicit toy models realizing many of the interesting structural features of the AdS/CFT correspondence, including the non-uniqueness of bulk operator reconstruction in the boundary theory. In this article, we explore the holographic properties of networks of random tensors. We find that our models naturally incorporate many features that are analogous to those of the AdS/CFT correspondence. When the bond dimension of the tensors is large, we show that the entanglement entropy of all boundary regions, whether connected or not, obey the Ryu-Takayanagi entropy formula, a fact closely related to known properties of the multipartite entanglement of assistance. We also discuss the behavior of Rényi entropies in our models and contrast it with AdS/CFT. Moreover, we find that each boundary region faithfully encodes the physics of the entire bulk entanglement wedge, i.e., the bulk region enclosed by the boundary region and the minimal surface. Our method is to interpret the average over random tensors as the partition function of a classical ferromagnetic Ising model, so that the minimal surfaces of Ryu-Takayanagi appear as domain walls. Upon including the analog of a bulk field, we find that our model reproduces the expected corrections to the Ryu-Takayanagi formula: the bulk minimal surface is displaced and the entropy is augmented by the entanglement of the bulk field. Increasing the entanglement of the bulk field ultimately changes the minimal surface behavior topologically, in a way similar to the effect of creating a black hole. Extrapolating bulk correlation functions to the boundary permits the calculation of the scaling dimensions of boundary operators, which exhibit a large gap between a small number of low-dimension operators and the rest. While we are primarily motivated by the AdS/CFT duality, the main results of the article define a more general form of bulk-boundary correspondence which could be useful for extending holography to other spacetimes.
Abstract Tensor networks are used to describe the ground state wavefunction of the quantum many-body system. Recently, it has been shown that a tensor network can generate the anti-de Sitter (AdS) geometry by using the entanglement renormalization approach, which provides a new way to realize bulk reconstruction in the AdS/conformal field theory correspondence. However, whether the dynamical connections can be found between the tensor network and gravity is an important unsolved problem. In this paper, we give a novel proposal to integrate ideas from tensor networks, entanglement entropy, canonical quantization of quantum gravity and the holographic principle and argue that the gravitational dynamics can be generated from a tensor network if the wave function of the latter satisfies the Wheeler–DeWitt equation.
Tensor networks are powerful techniques that widely used in condensed matter physics. In this language, the wave function of a quantum manybody system is described by a network of tensors with specific entanglement structures. Recently, it is shown that tensor network can generate the anti-de Sitter (AdS) geometry by using the entanglement renormalization approach. However, whether the dynamical connections can be found between the tensor network and the gravity is an important unsolved problem. In this paper, we give a novel proposal to integrate ideas from tensor networks, entanglement entropy, canonical quantization of quantum gravity and the holographic principle and argue that the gravitational dynamics can be generated from a tensor network if the wave function of the latter satisfies the Wheeler-DeWitt equation.
We present a general procedure for constructing tensor networks that accurately reproduce holographic states in conformal field theories (CFTs). Given a state in a large-N CFT with a static, semiclassical gravitational dual, we build a tensor network by an iterative series of approximations that eliminate redundant degrees of freedom and minimize the bond dimensions of the resulting network. We argue that the bond dimensions of the tensor network will match the areas of the corresponding bulk surfaces. For “tree” tensor networks (i.e., those that are constructed by discretizing spacetime with nonintersecting Ryu-Takayanagi surfaces), our arguments can be made rigorous using a version of one-shot entanglement distillation in the CFT. Using the known quantum error correcting properties of AdS/CFT, we show that bulk legs can be added to the tensor networks to create holographic quantum error correcting codes. These codes behave similarly to previous holographic tensor network toy models, but describe actual bulk excitations in continuum AdS/CFT. By assuming some natural generalizations of the “holographic entanglement of purification” conjecture, we are able to construct tensor networks for more general bulk discretizations, leading to finer-grained networks that partition the information content of a Ryu-Takayanagi surface into tensor-factorized subregions. While the granularity of such a tensor network must be set larger than the string/Planck scales, we expect that it can be chosen to lie well below the AdS scale. However, we also prove a no-go theorem which shows that the bulk-to-boundary maps cannot all be isometries in a tensor network with intersecting Ryu-Takayanagi surfaces.
A bstract We use hyperbolic tensor networks to construct a holographic map for black hole interiors that adds a notion of locality to the non-isometric codes proposed by Akers, Engelhardt, Harlow, Penington, and Vardhan. We use tools provided by these networks to study the relationship between non-isometries and quantum extremal surfaces behind the horizon. Furthermore, we introduce a limited notion of dynamics for these interior tensor networks based on the qudit models introduced by Akers et al., and study the evolution of quantum extremal surfaces in an evaporating black hole. We also find a tensor network description of a wormhole connecting the black hole interior to the radiation, providing a mechanism for interior states and operators to be encoded in the radiation after the Page time. As a particular case, we construct a tensor network realization of the backwards-forwards maps recently proposed to incorporate non-trivial effective dynamics in dynamical constructions of these non-isometric black hole codes.