Abstract We use the ‘bit thread’ formulation of holographic entanglement entropy to highlight the distinction between the universally-valid strong subadditivity and the more restrictive relation called monogamy of mutual information (MMI), known to hold for geometrical states (i.e. states of holographic theories with gravitational duals describing a classical bulk geometry). In particular, we provide a novel proof of MMI, using bit threads directly. To this end, we present an explicit geometrical construction of cooperative flows which we build out of disjoint thread bundles. We conjecture that our method applies in a wide class of configurations, including ones with non-trivial topology, causal structure, and time dependence. The explicit nature of the construction reveals that MMI is more deeply rooted in bulk locality than is the case for strong subadditivity.
Abstract We use the ‘bit thread’ formulation of holographic entanglement entropy to highlight the distinction between the universally-valid strong subadditivity and the more restrictive relation called monogamy of mutual information (MMI), known to hold for geometrical states (i.e. states of holographic theories with gravitational duals describing a classical bulk geometry). In particular, we provide a novel proof of MMI, using bit threads directly. To this end, we present an explicit geometrical construction of cooperative flows which we build out of disjoint thread bundles. We conjecture that our method applies in a wide class of configurations, including ones with non-trivial topology, causal structure, and time dependence. The explicit nature of the construction reveals that MMI is more deeply rooted in bulk locality than is the case for strong subadditivity.
Abstract Quantum corrections to holographic entanglement entropy require knowledge of the bulk quantum state. In this paper, we derive a novel dual prescription for the generalized entropy that allows us to interpret the leading quantum corrections in a geometric way with minimal input from the bulk state. The equivalence is proven using tools borrowed from convex optimization. The new prescription does not involve bulk surfaces but instead uses a generalized notion of a flow, which allows for possible sources or sinks in the bulk geometry. In its discrete version, our prescription can alternatively be interpreted in terms of a set of Planck-thickness bit threads, which can be either classical or quantum. This interpretation uncovers an aspect of the generalized entropy that admits a neat information-theoretic description, namely, the fact that the quantum corrections can be cast in terms of entanglement distillation of the bulk state. We also prove some general properties of our prescription, including nesting and a quantum version of the max multiflow theorem. These properties are used to verify that our proposal respects known inequalities that a von Neumann entropy must satisfy, including subadditivity and strong subadditivity, as well as to investigate the fate of the holographic monogamy. Finally, using the Iyer-Wald formalism we show that for cases with a local modular Hamiltonian there is always a canonical solution to the program that exploits the property of bulk locality. Combining with previous results by Swingle and Van Raamsdonk, we show that the con- sistency of this special solution requires the semi-classical Einstein’s equations to hold for any consistent perturbative bulk quantum state.
A bstract We revisit the recent reformulation of the holographic prescription to compute entanglement entropy in terms of a convex optimization problem, introduced by Freedman and Headrick. According to it, the holographic entanglement entropy associated to a boundary region is given by the maximum flux of a bounded, divergenceless vector field, through the corresponding region. Our work leads to two main results: (i) We present a general algorithm that allows the construction of explicit thread configurations in cases where the minimal surface is known. We illustrate the method with simple examples: spheres and strips in vacuum AdS, and strips in a black brane geometry. Studying more generic bulk metrics, we uncover a sufficient set of conditions on the geometry and matter fields that must hold to be able to use our prescription. (ii) Based on the nesting property of holographic entanglement entropy, we develop a method to construct bit threads that maximize the flux through a given bulk region. As a byproduct, we are able to construct more general thread configurations by combining (i) and (ii) in multiple patches. We apply our methods to study bit threads which simultaneously compute the entanglement entropy and the entanglement of purification of mixed states and comment on their interpretation in terms of entanglement distillation. We also consider the case of disjoint regions for which we can explicitly construct the so-called multi-commodity flows and show that the monogamy property of mutual information can be easily illustrated from our constructions.
Abstract We develop a framework for the derivation of new information theoretic quantities which are natural from a holographic perspective. We demonstrate the utility of our techniques by deriving the tripartite information (the quantity associated to monogamy of mutual information) using a set of abstract arguments involving bulk extremal surfaces. Our arguments rely on formal manipulations of surfaces and not on local surgery or explicit computation of entropies through the holographic entanglement entropy prescriptions. As an application, we show how to derive a family of similar information quantities for an arbitrary number of parties. The present work establishes the foundation of a broader program that aims at the understanding of the entanglement structures of geometric states for an arbitrary number of parties. We stress that our method is completely democratic with respect to bulk geometries and is equally valid in static and dynamical situations. While rooted in holography, we expect that our construction will provide a useful characterization of multipartite correlations in quantum field theories.
Abstract We apply the bit thread formulation of holographic entanglement entropy to reduced states describing only the geometry contained within an entanglement wedge. We argue that a certain optimized bit thread configuration, which we construct, gives a purification of the reduced state to a full holographic state obeying a precise set of conditional mutual information relations. When this purification exists, we establish, under certain assumptions, the conjectured E P = E W relation equating the entanglement of purification with the area of the minimal cross section partitioning the bulk entanglement wedge. Along the way, we comment on minimal purifications of holographic states, geometric purifications, and black hole geometries.
A bstract The concept of the generalized entanglement wedge was recently proposed by Bousso and Penington, which states that any bulk gravitational region a possesses an associated generalized entanglement wedge E ( a ) ⊃ a on a static Cauchy surface M in general gravitational spacetimes, where E ( a ) may contain an entanglement island I ( a ). It suggests that the fine-grained entropy for bulk region a is given by the generalized entropy S gen ( E ( a )). Motivated by this proposal, we extend the quantum bit thread description to general gravitational spacetimes, no longer limited to the AdS spacetime. By utilizing the convex optimization techniques, a dual flow description for the generalized entropy S gen ( E ( a )) of a bulk gravitational region a is established on the static Cauchy surface M , such that S gen ( E ( a )) is equal to the maximum flux of any flow that starts from the boundary ∂M and ends at bulk region a , or equivalently, the maximum number of bit threads that connect the boundary ∂M to the bulk region a . In addition, the nesting property of flows is also proved. Thus the basic properties of the entropy for bulk regions, i.e. the monotonicity, subadditivity, Araki-Lieb inequality and strong subadditivity, can be verified from flow perspectives by using properties of flows, such as the nesting property. Moreover, in max thread configurations, we find that there exists some lower bounds on the bulk entanglement entropy of matter fields in the region E ( a ) \ a , particularly on an entanglement island region I ( a ) ⊂ ( E ( a ) \ a ), as required by the existence of a nontrivial generalized entanglement wedge. Our quantum bit thread formulation may provide a way to investigate more fine-grained entanglement structures in general spacetimes.
Bit threads, arising as the convex dual of the minimal-surface formula for holographic entanglement entropy, are line-like structures with nontrivial bulk trajectories. Their physical picture has long been associated with Bell-pair interpretations, yet the meaning of their detailed trajectories, particularly their nonuniqueness, remains unclear. We propose to apply Coecke's notion of quantum information flow (QIF) in protocol-network geometry, developed within categorical quantum mechanics, to a holographic setup, and show that its trajectories within the discrete holographic bulk---the tensor network---obey the divergence-free and density-bound conditions of bit threads. From this process-centered perspective, bit-thread nonuniqueness becomes natural: for a given resource state, different protocols realizing the same distillation task can give rise to different QIF trajectories. We further analyze stabilizer-type holographic tensor networks using ZX string diagrams and show that QIF trajectories can probe finer entanglement structure beyond the level captured by entanglement entropy.