In this paper, we first study mutual information of excited states in the small subsystem size limit in generic conformal field theory. We then discuss relative entropy of two disjoint subsystems in the same limit.
Extending our previous work, we study the relative entropy between the reduced density matrices obtained from globally excited states in conformal field theories of arbitrary dimensions. We find a general formula in the small subsystem size limit. When one of the states is the vacuum of the CFT, our result matches with the holographic entanglement entropy computations in the corresponding bulk geometries, including AdS black branes. We also discuss the first asymmetric part of the relative entropy and comment on some implications of the results on the distinguishability of black hole microstates in AdS/CFT.
Abstract Relative entropy of entanglement (REE) is an entanglement measure of bipartite mixed states, defined by the minimum of the relative entropy S(ρ AB ||σ AB ) between a given mixed state ρ AB and an arbitrary separable state σ AB . The REE is always bounded by the mutual information I AB = S(ρ AB ||ρ A ⊗ ρ B ) because the latter measures not only quantum entanglement but also classical correlations. In this paper we address the question of to what extent REE can be small compared to the mutual information in conformal field theories (CFTs). For this purpose, we perturbatively compute the relative entropy between the vacuum reduced density matrix ρ AB 0 on disjoint subsystems A ∪ B and arbitrarily separable state σ AB in the limit where two subsystems A and B are well separated, then minimize the relative entropy with respect to the separable states. We argue that the result highly depends on the spectrum of CFT on the subsystems. When we have a few low energy spectrum of operators as in the case where the subsystems consist of finite number of spins in spin chain models, the REE is considerably smaller than the mutual information. However in general our perturbative scheme breaks down, and the REE can be as large as the mutual information.
We study the relative entropy and the trace square distance, both of which measure the distance between reduced density matrices of two excited states in two dimensional conformal field theories. We find a general formula for the relative entropy between two primary states with the same conformal dimension in the limit of a single small interval and find that in this case the relative entropy is proportional to the trace square distance. We check our general formulae by calculating the relative entropy between two generalized free fields and the trace square distance between the spin and disorder operators of the critical Ising model. We also give the leading term of the relative entropy in the small interval expansion when the two operators have different conformal dimensions. This turns out to be universal when the CFT has no primaires lighter than the stress tensor. The result reproduces the previously known special cases.
We analyze how excitations affect the entanglement entropy for an arbitrary entangling interval in a 2d conformal field theory (CFT) using the holographic entanglement entropy techniques as well as direct CFT computations. We introduce the excitation entanglement entropy ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}}_{h}S$, the difference between the entanglement entropy generic excitations and their arbitrary conformal descendants denoted through h. The excitation entanglement entropy, unlike the entanglement entropy, is a finite quantity (independent of the cutoff), and hence a good physical observable. We show that the excitation entanglement entropy for any given interval is uniquely specified by a local second order differential equation sourced by the one point function of the energy momentum tensor computed in the excited background state, and two boundary and smoothness conditions. We analyze low and high temperature behavior of the excitation entanglement entropy and show that ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}}_{h}S$ grows as a function of temperature. We prove an ``integrated positivity'' for the excitation entanglement entropy, that although ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}}_{h}S$ can be positive or negative, its average value is always positive. We also discuss the mutual and multipartite information and (strong) subadditivity inequality in the presence of generic excitations and their conformal descendants.
We consider the mutual Rényi information of disjoint compact spatial regions A and B in the ground state of a d + 1-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT), in the limit when the separation r between A and B is much greater than their sizes R A , B . We show that in general , where α is the smallest sum of the scaling dimensions of operators whose product has the quantum numbers of the vacuum, and the constants depend only on the shape of the regions and universal data of the CFT. For a free massless scalar field, where α = d − 1, we show that is proportional to the capacitance of a thin conducting slab in the shape of A in d + 1-dimensional electrostatics, and give explicit formulae for this when A is the interior of a sphere S d − 1 or an ellipsoid. For spherical regions in d = 2 and 3 we obtain explicit results for C ( n ) for all n and hence for the leading term in the mutual information by taking n → 1. We also compute a universal logarithmic correction to the area law for the Rényi entropies of a single spherical region for a scalar field theory with a small mass.
In this work, we study the universal behaviors in the mutual information of two disjoint spheres in a conformal field theory (CFT). By using the operator product expansion of the spherical twist operator in terms of the conformal family, we show that the large distance expansion of the mutual information can be cast in terms of the conformal blocks. We develop the 1/n prescription to compute the coefficients before the conformal blocks. For a single conformal family, the leading nonvanishing contribution to the mutual information comes from the bilinear operators. We show that the coefficients of these operators take universal forms and such universal behavior persists in the bilinear operators with derivatives as well. Consequently the first few leading order contributions to the mutual information in CFT take universal forms. To illustrate our framework, we discuss the free scalars and free fermions in various dimensions. For the free scalars, we compute the mutual information to the next-to-leading order and find good agreement with the improved numerical lattice result. For the free fermion, we compute the leading order result, which is of universal form, and find the good match with the numerical study. Our formalism could be applied to any CFT potentially.