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arXiv:1803.11162 · Journal of High Energy Physics

Holographic local quench and effective complexity

Dmitry Sergeevich Ageev, I. Ya. Aref’eva, Andrey A. Bagrov, Mikhail I. Katsnelson

Published Aug 1, 2018• 46 citations
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Abstract

Abstract We study the evolution of holographic complexity of pure and mixed states in 1 + 1-dimensional conformal field theory following a local quench using both the “complexity equals volume” (CV) and the “complexity equals action” (CA) conjectures. We compare the complexity evolution to the evolution of entanglement entropy and entanglement density, discuss the Lloyd computational bound and demonstrate its saturation in certain regimes. We argue that the conjectured holographic complexities exhibit some non-trivial features indicating that they capture important properties of what is expected to be effective (or physical) complexity.

DOI
10.1007/jhep08(2018)071

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Abstract We study the evolution of holographic complexity of pure and mixed states in 1 + 1-dimensional conformal field theory following a local quench using both the “complexity equals volume” (CV) and the “complexity equals action” (CA) conjectures. We compare the complexity evolution to the evolution of entanglement entropy and entanglement density, discuss the Lloyd computational bound and demonstrate its saturation in certain regimes. We argue that the conjectured holographic complexities exhibit some non-trivial features indicating that they capture important properties of what is expected to be effective (or physical) complexity.
Abstract: We discuss the behaviour of holographic entanglement entropy following a local quench in 2+1 dimensional strongly coupled CFTs. The entanglement generated by the quench propagates along an emergent light-cone, reminiscent of the Lieb-Robinson light-cone propagation of correlations in non-relativistic systems. We find the speed of propagation is bounded from below by the entanglement tsunami velocity obtained earlier for global quenches in holographic systems, and from above by the speed of light. The former is realized for sufficiently broad quenches, while the latter pertains for well localized quenches. The non-universal behavior in the intermediate regime appears to stem from finite-size effects. We also note that the entanglement entropy of subsystems reverts to the equilibrium value exponentially fast, in contrast to a much slower equilibration seen in certain spin models.
We discuss the behaviour of holographic entanglement entropy following a local quench in 2+1 dimensional strongly coupled CFTs. The entanglement generated by the quench propagates along an emergent light-cone, reminiscent of the Lieb-Robinson light-cone propagation of correlations in non-relativistic systems. We find the speed of propagation is bounded from below by the entanglement tsunami velocity obtained earlier for global quenches in holographic systems, and from above by the speed of light. The former is realized for sufficiently broad quenches, while the latter pertains for well localized quenches. The non-universal behavior in the intermediate regime appears to stem from finite-size effects. We also note that the entanglement entropy of subsystems reverts to the equilibrium value exponentially fast, in contrast to a much slower equilibration seen in certain spin models.
Abstract We present a new class of local quenches described by mixed states, parameterized universally by two parameters. We compute the evolutions of entanglement entropy for both a holographic and Dirac fermion CFT in two dimensions. This turns out to be equivalent to calculations of two point functions on a torus. We find that in holographic CFTs, the results coincide with the known results of pure state local operator quenches. On the other hand, we obtain new behaviors in the Dirac fermion CFT, which are missing in the pure state counterpart. By combining our results with the inequalities known for von-Neumann entropy, we obtain an upper bound of the pure state local operator quenches in the Dirac fermion CFT. We also explore predictions about the behaviors of entanglement entropy for more general mixed states.
A bstract Within the AdS/CFT correspondence, computational complexity for reduced density matrices of holographic conformal field theories has been conjectured to be related to certain geometric observables in the dual gravity theory. We study this conjecture from both the gravity and field theory point of view. Specifically, we consider a measure of complexity associated to the Bures metric on the space of density matrices. We compute this complexity measure for mixed states associated to single intervals in descendant states of the vacuum in 2d CFTs. Moreover, we derive from first principles a geometric observable dual to the Bures metric which is localized in the entanglement wedge of the AdS spacetime associated to the quantum circuit on the boundary. Finally, we compare the Bures metric complexity measure with holographic subregion complexity within the “complexity=volume” paradigm for perturbatively small transformations of the vacuum. While there is no exact agreement between these two quantities, we find striking similarities as we vary the target state and interval size, suggesting that these quantities are closely related.
We study the evolution and scaling of the entanglement entropy after two types of quenches for a 2+1 field theory, using a conjectured holographic technique for its computation. We study a thermal quench, dual to the addition of a shell of uncharged matter to four-dimensional anti-de Sitter (AdS 4 ) spacetime, and study the subsequent formation of a Schwarzschild black hole. We also study an electromagnetic quench, dual to the addition of a shell of charged sources to AdS 4 , following the subsequent formation of an extremal dyonic black hole. In these backgrounds, we consider the entanglement entropy of two types of geometries, the infinite strip and the round disc, and find distinct behavior for each. Some of our findings naturally supply results analogous to observations made in the literature for lower dimensions, but we also uncover several new phenomena, such as (in some cases) a discontinuity in the time derivative of the entanglement entropy as it nears saturation, and for the electromagnetic quench, a logarithmic growth in the entanglement entropy with time for both the disc and strip, before settling to saturation. We briefly discuss the possible origin of the new phenomena in terms of the features of the conjectured dual field theory.
We consider the entanglement entropy in 2d conformal field theory in a class of excited states produced by the insertion of a heavy local operator. These include both high-energy eigenstates of the Hamiltonian and time-dependent local quenches. We compute the universal contribution from the stress tensor to the single interval Renyi entropies and entanglement entropy, and conjecture that this dominates the answer in theories with a large central charge and a sparse spectrum of low-dimension operators. The resulting entanglement entropies agree precisely with holographic calculations in three-dimensional gravity. High-energy eigenstates are dual to microstates of the BTZ black hole, so the corresponding holographic calculation is a geodesic length in the black hole geometry; agreement between these two answers demonstrates that these individual microstates of holographic CFTs effectively thermalize at the level of the single-interval entanglement entropy. For local quenches, the dual geometry is a highly boosted black hole or conical defect. On the CFT side, the rise in entanglement entropy after a quench is directly related to the monodromy of a Virasoro conformal block.