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arXiv:1810.02336

A Microscopic Model of Holography: Survival by the Burden of Memory

Gia Dvali

Published Oct 4, 2018• 23 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

An explicit microscopic realization of the phenomenon of holography is provided by a class of simple quantum theories of a bosonic field inhabiting a d-dimensional space and experiencing a momentum dependent attractive interaction. An exact mode counting reveals a family of holographic states. In each a set of gapless modes emerges with their number equal to the area of a (d-1)-dimensional sphere. These modes store an exponentially large number of patterns within a microscopic energy gap. The resulting micro-state entropy obeys the area-law reminiscent of a black hole entropy. We study the time-evolution of the stored patterns and observe the following phenomenon: Among the degenerate micro-states the ones with heavier loaded memories survive longer than those that store emptier patterns. Thus, a state gets stabilized by the burden of its own memory. From time to time the information pattern gets off-loaded from one holographic state into another but cannot escape the system. During this process the pattern becomes highly entangled and scrambled. We suggest that this phenomenon is universal in systems with enhanced memory storage capacity, such as black holes or critical neural networks. This universality sheds an interesting light on the puzzle of why, despite the evaporation, is a black hole forced to maintain information internally for a very long time.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1810.02336

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An explicit microscopic realization of the phenomenon of holography is provided by a class of simple quantum theories of a bosonic field inhabiting a d-dimensional space and experiencing a momentum dependent attractive interaction. An exact mode counting reveals a family of holographic states. In each a set of gapless modes emerges with their number equal to the area of a (d-1)-dimensional sphere. These modes store an exponentially large number of patterns within a microscopic energy gap. The resulting micro-state entropy obeys the area-law reminiscent of a black hole entropy. We study the time-evolution of the stored patterns and observe the following phenomenon: Among the degenerate micro-states the ones with heavier loaded memories survive longer than those that store emptier patterns. Thus, a state gets stabilized by the burden of its own memory. From time to time the information pattern gets off-loaded from one holographic state into another but cannot escape the system. During this process the pattern becomes highly entangled and scrambled. We suggest that this phenomenon is universal in systems with enhanced memory storage capacity, such as black holes or critical neural networks. This universality sheds an interesting light on the puzzle of why, despite the evaporation, is a black hole forced to maintain information internally for a very long time.
It is often assumed that the area law of microstate entropy and the holography are intrinsic properties exclusively of the gravitational systems, such as black holes. We construct a nongravitational model that exhibits an entropy that scales as area of a sphere of one dimension less. It is represented by a nonrelativistic bosonic field living on a ddd-dimensional sphere of radius RRR and experiencing an angular-momentum-dependent attractive interaction. We show that the system possesses a quantum critical point with the emergent gapless modes. Their number is equal to the area of a $d\ensuremath{-}1$-dimensional sphere of the same radius RRR. These gapless modes create an exponentially large number of degenerate microstates with the corresponding microstate entropy given by the area of the same $d\ensuremath{-}1$-dimensional sphere. Thanks to a double-scaling limit, the counting of the entropy and of the number of the gapless modes is made exact. The phenomenon takes place for arbitrary number of dimensions and can be viewed as a version of holography.
It was found, by studying black holes, that the compatibility of the theory of gravity and the laws of quantum mechanics demands that the universe must act like a hologram. That is, all the information inside a region of the universe should be encoded on a so-called holographic screen of one-lesser dimension. This is termed the holographic principle. In a generic spacetime, such as an expanding universe, holographic screens depend on the choice of an observer, which is consistent with the notion that the observer is part of the system in cosmology. In the first part of this dissertation, we study the observer-dependence of holographic screens. This will help us understand how the fundamental description of the universe depends on the choice of the observer. Furthermore, we study the dynamics of the holographic screens and their geometry in the first part of this dissertation.An example where the holographic principle is manifest is the AdS-CFT correspondence. This correspondence connects quantum information quantities, like entanglement and complexity, to geometric quantities, like area and volume, respectively. In the second and the third part of this dissertation, we use the AdS-CFT correspondence as a tool to calculate the entanglement entropy and the computational complexity of a quenched CFT state. Studying the time evolution of the entanglement entropy following a quantum quench teaches us how a CFT state thermalizes. On the other hand, studying the time evolution of the computational complexity allows us to check the validity of various recent conjectures involving black holes and complexity.
Motivated by the potential similarities between the underlying mechanisms of the enhanced memory storage capacity in black holes and in brain networks, we construct an artificial quantum neural network based on gravity-like synaptic connections and a symmetry structure that allows to describe the network in terms of geometry of a d-dimensional space. We show that the network possesses a critical state in which the gapless neurons emerge that appear to inhabit a (d-1)-dimensional surface, with their number given by the surface area. In the excitations of these neurons, the network can store and retrieve an exponentially large number of patterns within an arbitrarily narrow energy gap. The corresponding micro-state entropy of the brain network exhibits an area law. The neural network can be described in terms of a quantum field, via identifying the different neurons with the different momentum modes of the field, while identifying the synaptic connections among the neurons with the interactions among the corresponding momentum modes. Such a mapping allows to attribute a well-defined sense of geometry to an intrinsically non-local system, such as the neural network, and vice versa, it allows to represent the quantum field model as a neural network.
We implement a mechanism - originally proposed as a model for the large memory storage capacity of black holes - in quantum neural networks and show that an exponentially increased capacity of pattern storage and recognition is achieved in certain critically excited states, without involvement of synaptic plasticity. We consider a simple network of N interconnected quantum neurons with weak excitatory synaptic connections. We show that for frozen synaptic weights there exist the critical states of enhanced memory storage capacity. These states are achieved thanks to the high excitation levels of some of the neurons, which - despite of feeble synaptic connections - dramatically lower the response threshold of the remaining weaker-excited neurons. As a results, the latter neurons acquire a capacity to store an exponentially large number of patterns within a narrow energy gap. The stored patterns can be recognized and retrieved with perfect response under the influence of arbitrarily soft input stimuli. In sharp contrast, under the same stimuli the recall is absent in the ground-state of the system. The lesson is that the state with the highest micro-state entropy and memory storage capacity is not necessarily a local minimum of energy, but rather an excited critical state. The considered phenomenon has a smooth classical limit and can serve for achieving an enhanced memory storage capacity in classical brain networks.
Abstract We construct a holographic map that takes the semi-classical state of an evaporating black hole and its Hawking radiation to a microscopic model that reflects the scrambling dynamics of the black hole. The microscopic model is given by a nested sequence of random unitaries, each one implementing a scrambling time step of the black hole evolution. Differently from other models, energy conservation and the thermal nature of the Hawking radiation are taken into account. We show that the QES formula follows for the entropy of multiple subsets of the radiation and black hole. We further show that a version of entanglement wedge reconstruction can be proved by computing suitable trace norms and quantum fidelities involving the action of a unitary on a subset of Hawking partners. If the Hawking partner is in an island, its unitary can be reconstructed by a unitary on the radiation. We also adopt a similar setup and analyse reconstruction of unitaries acting on an infalling system.
A bstract In this note, we reexamine decoherence effects in quantum field theories with gravity duals. The thought experiment proposed in [1, 2], which reveals novel decoherence patterns associated with black holes, also manifests itself from the perspective of the boundary theory. In particular, we consider a moving mirror coupled to quantum critical theories characterized by a dynamical exponent z that are dual to asymptotically Lifshitz geometries. The interference experiment occurs on the boundary, where a superposition of two spatially separated quantum states of a mirror is maintained for a finite time τ 0 before recombination. We find that the interaction with a quantum field at finite temperature, arising from the presence of a Lifshitz black hole, leads to a constant decoherence rate. In contrast, for the zero-temperature case corresponding to pure Lifshitz spacetime, the decoherence rate vanishes in the large-time limit τ 0 → ∞. Remarkably, in the zero-temperature regime, the decoherence exhibits a power-law decay at large τ 0 as z → ∞, a behavior reminiscent of the decoherence patterns seen in extremal black hole geometries. In addition, we investigate the decoherence of one particle in an EPR pair constructed holographically. Our results indicate that causality plays a crucial role in determining whether the entanglement leads to the suppression of decoherence in the other particle.