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arXiv:2404.03651 · SciPost Physics Core

Multipartite edge modes and tensor networks

Chris Akers, Ronak M Soni, Annie Y. Wei

Published Nov 8, 2024• 10 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Holographic tensor networks model AdS/CFT, but so far they have been limited by involving only systems that are very different from gravity. Unfortunately, we cannot straightforwardly discretize gravity to incorporate it, because that would break diffeomorphism invariance. In this note, we explore a resolution. In low dimensions gravity can be written as a topological gauge theory, which can be discretized without breaking gauge-invariance. However, new problems arise. Foremost, we now need a qualitatively new kind of “area operator,” which has no relation to the number of links along the cut and is instead topological. Secondly, the inclusion of matter becomes trickier. We successfully construct a tensor network both including matter and with this new type of area. Notably, while this area is still related to the entanglement in “edge mode” degrees of freedom, the edge modes are no longer bipartite entangled pairs. Instead they are highly multipartite. Along the way, we calculate the entropy of novel subalgebras in a particular topological gauge theory. We also show that the multipartite nature of the edge modes gives rise to non-commuting area operators, a property that other tensor networks do not exhibit.

DOI
10.21468/scipostphyscore.7.4.070

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Holographic tensor networks model AdS/CFT, but so far they have been limited by involving only systems that are very different from gravity. Unfortunately, we cannot straightforwardly discretize gravity to incorporate it, because that would break diffeomorphism invariance. In this note, we explore a resolution. In low dimensions gravity can be written as a topological gauge theory, which can be discretized without breaking gauge-invariance. However, new problems arise. Foremost, we now need a qualitatively new kind of “area operator,” which has no relation to the number of links along the cut and is instead topological. Secondly, the inclusion of matter becomes trickier. We successfully construct a tensor network both including matter and with this new type of area. Notably, while this area is still related to the entanglement in “edge mode” degrees of freedom, the edge modes are no longer bipartite entangled pairs. Instead they are highly multipartite. Along the way, we calculate the entropy of novel subalgebras in a particular topological gauge theory. We also show that the multipartite nature of the edge modes gives rise to non-commuting area operators, a property that other tensor networks do not exhibit.
A bstract Tensor networks prepare states which share many features of states in quantum gravity. However, standard constructions are not diffeomorphism invariant and do not support an algebra of non-commuting area operators. Recently, analogues of both problems were addressed in a tensor network discretization of topological field theories (TFT) with finite or compact gauge groups. Here, we extend this work towards gravity by generalizing to gauge groups that are discrete or continuous, compact or non-compact. Applied to SL(2, ℝ ) × SL(2, ℝ ) Chern-Simons theory, our construction can be interpreted as building states of three dimensional gravity with a negative cosmological constant. Our tensor networks prepare states which satisfy the constraints of Chern-Simons theory. In metric variables, this implies that the states we construct satisfy the Wheeler-DeWitt equation and momentum constraints, and so are diffeomorphism invariant.
Tensor networks provide a natural framework for exploring holographic duality because they obey entanglement area laws. They have been used to construct explicit toy models realizing many of the interesting structural features of the AdS/CFT correspondence, including the non-uniqueness of bulk operator reconstruction in the boundary theory. In this article, we explore the holographic properties of networks of random tensors. We find that our models naturally incorporate many features that are analogous to those of the AdS/CFT correspondence. When the bond dimension of the tensors is large, we show that the entanglement entropy of all boundary regions, whether connected or not, obey the Ryu-Takayanagi entropy formula, a fact closely related to known properties of the multipartite entanglement of assistance. We also discuss the behavior of Rényi entropies in our models and contrast it with AdS/CFT. Moreover, we find that each boundary region faithfully encodes the physics of the entire bulk entanglement wedge, i.e., the bulk region enclosed by the boundary region and the minimal surface. Our method is to interpret the average over random tensors as the partition function of a classical ferromagnetic Ising model, so that the minimal surfaces of Ryu-Takayanagi appear as domain walls. Upon including the analog of a bulk field, we find that our model reproduces the expected corrections to the Ryu-Takayanagi formula: the bulk minimal surface is displaced and the entropy is augmented by the entanglement of the bulk field. Increasing the entanglement of the bulk field ultimately changes the minimal surface behavior topologically, in a way similar to the effect of creating a black hole. Extrapolating bulk correlation functions to the boundary permits the calculation of the scaling dimensions of boundary operators, which exhibit a large gap between a small number of low-dimension operators and the rest. While we are primarily motivated by the AdS/CFT duality, the main results of the article define a more general form of bulk-boundary correspondence which could be useful for extending holography to other spacetimes.
Holographic tensor networks serve as toy models for the Anti-de Sitter/Conformal Field Theory (AdS/CFT) correspondence, capturing many of its essential features in a concrete manner. However, existing holographic tensor network models remain far from a complete theory of quantum gravity. A key obstacle is their discrete structure, which only approximates the semi-classical geometry of gravity in a qualitative sense. In \cite{Lin:2024dho}, it was shown that a network of partial-entanglement-entropy (PEE) threads, which are bulk geodesics with a specific density distribution, generates a perfect tessellation of AdS space. Moreover, such PEE-network tessellations can be constructed for more highly symmetric geometries using the Crofton formula. In this paper, we assign a quantum state to each vertex in the PEE network and develop several holographic tensor network models: (1) the factorized PEE tensor network, which takes the form of a tensor product of EPR pairs; (2) the HaPPY-like PEE tensor network constructed from perfect tensors; and (3) the random PEE tensor network. In all these models, we reproduce the exact Ryu-Takayanagi formula by showing that the minimal number of cuts along a homologous surface in the network exactly equals the area of that surface.
Conventional holographic tensor networks can be described as toy holographic maps constructed from many small linear maps acting in a spatially local way, all connected together with “background entanglement”, i.e. links of a fixed state, often the maximally entangled state. However, these constructions fall short of modeling real holographic maps. One reason is that their “areas” are trivial, taking the same value for all states, unlike in gravity where the geometry is dynamical. Recently, new constructions have ameliorated this issue by adding degrees of freedom that “live on the links”. This makes areas non-trivial, equal to the background entanglement piece plus a new positive piece that depends on the state of the link degrees of freedom. Nevertheless, this still has the downside that there is background entanglement, and hence it only models relatively limited code subspaces in which every area has a definite minimum value. In this note, we simply point out that a version of these constructions goes one step further: they can be background independent, with no background entanglement in the holographic map. This is advantageous because it allows tensor networks to model holographic maps for larger code subspaces. In addition to pointing this out, we address some subtleties involved in making it work.
One approach to analyzing entanglement in a gauge theory is embedding it into a factorized theory with edge modes on the entangling boundary. For topological quantum field theories (TQFT), this naturally leads to factorizing a TQFT by adding local edge modes associated with the corresponding CFT. In this work, we instead construct a minimal set of edge modes compatible with the topological invariance of Chern-Simons theory. This leads us to propose a minimal factorization map. These minimal edge modes can be interpreted as the degrees of freedom of a particle on a quantum group. Of particular interest is three-dimensional gravity as a Chern-Simons theory with gauge group SL (2,\mathbb{R}) × ( 2 , ℝ ) × SL (2,\mathbb{R}) ( 2 , ℝ ) . Our minimal factorization proposal uniquely gives rise to quantum group edge modes factorizing the bulk state space of 3d gravity. This agrees with earlier proposals that relate the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy in 3d gravity to topological entanglement entropy.
We derive an entropy formula for recently proposed tensor network models which prepare diffeomorphism invariant states of topological quantum field theories with non-compact and/or continuous gauge groups. We show that our entropy formula generalizes the notion of ``topological entanglement entropy'' to incorporate the infinite number of particle-like excitations in such theories. When our networks are endowed with gauge group SL(2,R)\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{R})SL(2,R), we can interpret them as models of three-dimensional gravity with small Newton's constant and possibly non-invertible metrics.