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arXiv:2205.13338 · Physical review. D/Physical review. D.

Dynamical scaling symmetry and asymptotic quantum correlations for time-dependent scalar fields

S. Mahesh Chandran, S. Shankaranarayanan

Published Jan 5, 2023• 11 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In time-independent quantum systems, entanglement entropy possesses an inherent scaling symmetry that the energy of the system does not have. The symmetry also assures that entropy divergence can be associated with the zero modes. We generalize this symmetry to time-dependent systems all the way from a coupled harmonic oscillator with a time-dependent frequency, to quantum scalar fields with time-dependent mass. We show that such systems have dynamical scaling symmetry that leaves the evolution of various measures of quantum correlations invariant; entanglement entropy, GS fidelity, the Loschmidt echo, and circuit complexity. Using this symmetry, we show that several quantum correlations are related at late times when the system develops instabilities. We then quantify such instabilities in terms of scrambling time and Lyapunov exponents. The delayed onset of exponential decay of the Loschmidt echo is found to be determined by the largest inverted mode in the system. On the other hand, a zero mode retains information about the system for a considerably longer time, finally resulting in a power-law decay of the Loschmidt echo. We extend the analysis to time-dependent massive scalar fields in ($1+1$)-dimensions and discuss the implications of zero modes and inverted modes occurring in the system at late times. We explicitly show the entropy scaling oscillates between the area-law and volume-law for a scalar field with stable modes or zero modes. We then provide a qualitative discussion of the above effects for scalar fields in cosmological and black hole spacetimes.

DOI
10.1103/physrevd.107.025003

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In time-independent quantum systems, entanglement entropy possesses an inherent scaling symmetry that the energy of the system does not have. The symmetry also assures that entropy divergence can be associated with the zero modes. We generalize this symmetry to time-dependent systems all the way from a coupled harmonic oscillator with a time-dependent frequency, to quantum scalar fields with time-dependent mass. We show that such systems have dynamical scaling symmetry that leaves the evolution of various measures of quantum correlations invariant; entanglement entropy, GS fidelity, the Loschmidt echo, and circuit complexity. Using this symmetry, we show that several quantum correlations are related at late times when the system develops instabilities. We then quantify such instabilities in terms of scrambling time and Lyapunov exponents. The delayed onset of exponential decay of the Loschmidt echo is found to be determined by the largest inverted mode in the system. On the other hand, a zero mode retains information about the system for a considerably longer time, finally resulting in a power-law decay of the Loschmidt echo. We extend the analysis to time-dependent massive scalar fields in (1+11+11+1)-dimensions and discuss the implications of zero modes and inverted modes occurring in the system at late times. We explicitly show the entropy scaling oscillates between the area-law and volume-law for a scalar field with stable modes or zero modes. We then provide a qualitative discussion of the above effects for scalar fields in cosmological and black hole spacetimes.
Abstract We study dynamics of quantum entanglement in smooth global quenches with a finite rate, by computing the time evolution of entanglement entropy in 1 + 1 dimensional free scalar theory with time-dependent masses which start from a nonzero value at early time and either crosses or approaches zero. The time-dependence is chosen so that the quantum dynamics is exactly solvable. If the quenches asymptotically approach a critical point at late time, the early-time and late-time entropies are proportional to the time and subsystem size respectively. Their proportionality coefficients are determined by scales: in a fast limit, an initial correlation length; in a slow limit, an effective scale defined when adiabaticity breaks down. If the quenches cross a critical point, the time evolution of entropy is characterized by the scales: the initial correlation length in the fast limit and the effective correlation length in the slow limit. The entropy oscillates, and the entanglement oscillation comes from a coherence between right-moving and left-moving waves if we measure the entropy after time characterized by the quench rate. The periodicity of the late-time oscillation is consistent with the periodicity of the oscillation of zero modes which are zero-momentum value of two point functions of a fundamental field and its conjugate momentum.
We establish a one-to-one mapping between entanglement energy, entropy, and temperature (quantum entanglement mechanics) with Komar energy, black hole entropy, and Hawking temperature, respectively. We show this explicitly for 4D spherically symmetric asymptotically flat and nonflat space-times with single and multiple horizons. We exploit an inherent scaling symmetry of entanglement entropy and identify scaling transformations that generate an infinite number of systems with the same entanglement entropy, distinguished only by their respective energies and temperatures. We show that this scaling symmetry is present in most well-known systems starting from the two-coupled harmonic oscillator to quantum scalar fields in spherically symmetric space-time. The scaling symmetry allows us to identify the cause of divergence of entanglement entropy to the generation of (near) zero-modes in the systems. We systematically isolate the zero-mode contributions using suitable boundary conditions. We show that the entanglement entropy and energy of quantum scalar field scale differently in space-times with horizons and flat space-time. The relation E=2TSE=2TSE=2TS, in analogy with the horizon's thermodynamic structure, is also found to be universally satisfied in the entanglement picture. We then show that there exists a one-to-one correspondence leading to the Smarr-formula of black hole thermodynamics for asymptotically flat and nonflat space-times.
We investigate the cause of the divergence of the entanglement entropy for the free scalar fields in (1+1)(1+1)(1+1) and (D+1)(D+1)(D+1) dimensional space-times. In a canonically equivalent set of variables, we show explicitly that the divergence in the entanglement entropy of the continuum field in (1+1)(1+1)(1+1) dimensions is due to the accumulation of a large number of near-zero frequency modes as opposed to the commonly held view of divergence having UV origin. The feature revealing the divergence in zero modes is related to the observation that the entropy is invariant under a hidden scaling transformation even when the Hamiltonian is not. We discuss the role of dispersion relations and the dimensionality of the space-time on the behavior of entanglement entropy.
We study three different measures of quantum correlations---entanglement spectrum, entanglement entropy, and logarithmic negativity---for a (1+11+11+1)-dimensional massive scalar field in a flat space-time. The entanglement spectrum for the discretized scalar field in the ground state indicates a crossover in the zero-mode regime, which is further substantiated by an analytical treatment of both entanglement entropy and logarithmic negativity. The exact nature of this crossover depends on the boundary conditions used---the leading order term switches from a log to log-log behavior for the periodic and Neumann boundary conditions. In contrast, for Dirichlet, it is the parameters within the leading log-log term that are switched. We show that this crossover manifests as a change in the behavior of the leading order divergent term for entanglement entropy and logarithmic negativity close to the zero-mode limit. We thus show that the two regimes have fundamentally different information content. Furthermore, an analysis of the ground-state fidelity shows us that the region between critical point $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}=0$ and the crossover point is dominated by zero-mode effects, featuring an explicit dependence on the IR cutoff of the system. For the reduced state of a single oscillator, we show that this crossover occurs in the region $Na{m}_{f}\ensuremath{\sim}\ensuremath{\mathcal{O}}(1)$.
We investigate the entanglement entropy of a massive scalar field using the spherical shell lattice model introduced by Das and Shankaranarayanan. A systematic numerical analysis is performed to study the dependence of the entropy on the field mass and on the size of the entangling region for both ground and excited states. For the ground state, we find that the entanglement entropy is exponentially suppressed by the field mass, reflecting the presence of a finite correlation length, while the geometric area-law scaling remains robust for all masses. For localized excited states, however, we uncover a qualitatively different behavior. The excess entropy does not exhibit universal scaling in the dimensionless variable mR. Instead, numerical results show that data points with identical mR but different (m,R) pairs do not collapse onto a single curve, demonstrating a clear violation of simple scaling. This breakdown is traced to the presence of an additional length scale associated with the finite width of the wave-packet excitation. This result identifies the coexistence of multiple infrared scales as a key feature of excited-state entanglement in massive quantum field theories. Mutual information provides an additional finite diagnostic of correlations in the chosen nested geometry. The numerical results show a strong dependence on the field mass, although the detailed behavior is sensitive to the geometric setup used in the calculation. These findings clarify how particle mass and excitation structure jointly determine entanglement properties, and suggest that the matter contribution to the generalized entropy in semiclassical gravity may depend on independent infrared parameters rather than on a single correlation scale. Implications for black hole entropy and the island formula are briefly discussed.
A bstract The entanglement entropy of a free scalar field in its ground state is dominated by an area law term. It is noteworthy, however, that the study of entanglement in scalar field theory has not advanced far beyond the ground state. In this paper, we extend the study of entanglement of harmonic systems, which include free scalar field theory as a continuum limit, to the case of the most general Gaussian states, namely the squeezed states. We find the eigenstates and the spectrum of the reduced density matrix and we calculate the entanglement entropy. We show that our method is equivalent to the correlation matrix method. Finally, we apply our method to free scalar field theory in 1+1 dimensions and show that, for very squeezed states, the entanglement entropy is dominated by a volume term, unlike the ground-state case. Even though the state of the system is time-dependent in a non-trivial manner, this volume term is time-independent. We expect this behaviour to hold in higher dimensions as well, as it emerges in a large-squeezing expansion of the entanglement entropy for a general harmonic system.