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arXiv:2510.13783

Observation of area laws in an interacting quantum field simulator

Maciej T. Jarema, Mohammadamin Tajik, Jörg Schmiedmayer, Silke Weinfurtner, Haas, Tobias

Published Oct 15, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

Information shared between parties quantifies their correlation. The encoding of correlations across space and time characterises the structure, history, and interactions of systems. One of the most fundamental properties that emerges from studies of information is the area law, which states that information shared between spatial subregions typically scales with the area of their boundary rather than their volume. In non-interacting, quantum many-body systems, where Gaussian statistics apply, the scaling of information measures is well understood. Within interacting systems, the readout of information measures is impeded by the complexity of state reconstruction. As such, no measurements beyond small quantum systems (e.g., composed of few, localised particles) have been made. Here, we fill this gap by experimentally demonstrating the area law of mutual information in an ultra-cold atom simulator of quantum fields with tuneable interaction strength. Our results detail the scaling of mutual information with subsystem volume, boundary area, and separation between spatial regions at finite temperature. Moreover, we quantify the total effect of non-Gaussian correlations using an information-theoretic measure - relative entropy. Our presented approach is data-driven, model agnostic, and readily applicable to other platforms and observables, thus constituting a universal toolkit for probing information in high-dimensional quantum systems and its role in shaping quantum matter and spacetime.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2510.13783

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Information shared between parties quantifies their correlation. The encoding of correlations across space and time characterises the structure, history, and interactions of systems. One of the most fundamental properties that emerges from studies of information is the area law, which states that information shared between spatial subregions typically scales with the area of their boundary rather than their volume. In non-interacting, quantum many-body systems, where Gaussian statistics apply, the scaling of information measures is well understood. Within interacting systems, the readout of information measures is impeded by the complexity of state reconstruction. As such, no measurements beyond small quantum systems (e.g., composed of few, localised particles) have been made. Here, we fill this gap by experimentally demonstrating the area law of mutual information in an ultra-cold atom simulator of quantum fields with tuneable interaction strength. Our results detail the scaling of mutual information with subsystem volume, boundary area, and separation between spatial regions at finite temperature. Moreover, we quantify the total effect of non-Gaussian correlations using an information-theoretic measure - relative entropy. Our presented approach is data-driven, model agnostic, and readily applicable to other platforms and observables, thus constituting a universal toolkit for probing information in high-dimensional quantum systems and its role in shaping quantum matter and spacetime.
Theoretical understanding of the scaling of entropies and the mutual information has led to significant advances in the research of correlated states of matter, quantum field theory, and gravity. Measuring von Neumann entropy in quantum many-body systems is challenging as it requires complete knowledge of the density matrix. In this work, we measure the von Neumann entropy of spatially extended subsystems in an ultra-cold atom simulator of one-dimensional quantum field theories. We experimentally verify one of the fundamental properties of equilibrium states of gapped quantum many-body systems, the area law of quantum mutual information. We also study the dependence of mutual information on temperature and the separation between the subsystems. Our work is a crucial step toward employing ultra-cold atom simulators to probe entanglement in quantum field theories.
Understanding quantum correlations through information-theoretic measures is fundamental to developments in quantum field theory, quantum information, and quantum many-body physics. A central feature in a plethora of systems is the area law, under which information scales with the size of the boundary of the system, rather than volume. Whilst many systems and regimes exhibiting an area law have been identified theoretically, experimental verification remains limited, particularly in continuous systems. We present a methodology for measuring mutual information in an experimental simulator of non-interacting quantum fields, and propose using the analogue (2+1)(2 + 1)(2+1)-dimensional spacetime offered by thin films of superfluid helium. We provide numerical predictions incorporating the natural thermal state of the helium sample that exemplify an area-law scaling of mutual information, and characterise deviations attributable to the inherent finite system size.
Abstract Information-theoretic measures, such as entropy and mutual information, provide a comprehensive tool for characterising quantum correlations. They reveal foundational features across quantum many-body systems, quantum field theory (QFT), and even black hole thermodynamics. A striking example is the emergence of area laws , occurring when correlations are constrained to local regions, causing information to scale with boundary area, rather than volume. Whilst area laws have been experimentally observed in discrete quantum systems, they remain under-explored in continuous quantum fields owing to the lack of implementable measurement techniques in these settings. Here, we propose using phononic excitations (third sound) on thin-film superfluid helium as a (2 + 1)-dimensional quantum field simulator. In light of recent advances in high-resolution detection schemes, this platform now offers experimental access to the spatially and temporally resolved effective field. We develop a framework to utilise experimentally accessible observables to reconstruct the covariance matrix and evaluate distributions of mutual information. Our numerical predictions confirm area-law behaviour with characteristic deviations due to effects of confinement. Finally, we outline a clear pathway towards experimental implementation of our proposal considering state-of-the-art imaging and cryogenic technologies.
Abstract Area laws are a far-reaching consequence of the locality of physical interactions, and they are relevant in a range of systems, from black holes to quantum many-body systems. Typically, these laws concern the entanglement entropy or the quantum mutual information of a subsystem at a single time. However, when considering information propagating in spacetime, while carried by a physical system with local interactions, it is intuitive to expect area laws to hold for spacetime regions. In this work, we prove such a law for quantum lattice systems. We consider two agents interacting in disjoint spacetime regions with a spin-lattice system that evolves in time according to a local Hamiltonian. In their respective spacetime regions, the two agents apply quantum instruments to the spins. By considering a purification of the quantum instruments, and analyzing the quantum mutual information between the ancillas used to implement them, we obtain a spacetime area law bound on the amount of correlation between the agents’ measurement outcomes. Furthermore, this bound applies both to signaling correlations between the choice of operations on the side of one agent, and the measurement outcomes on the side of the other; as well as to the entanglement they can harvest from the spins by coupling detectors to them.
Characterizing the nonlocal nature of quantum states is a central challenge in the practical application of large-scale quantum computation and simulation. Quantum mutual information (QMI), a fundamental nonlocal measure, plays a key role in quantifying entanglement and has become increasingly important in studying nonequilibrium quantum many-body phenomena, such as many-body localization and thermalization. However, experimental measurement of QMI remains extremely difficult, particularly for nonequilibrium states, which are more complex than ground states. In this Letter, we employ a multilayer perceptron (MLP) to establish a universal mapping between the QMI and local correlations only up to second order for nonequilibrium states generated by quenches in a one-dimensional disordered XXZ model. Our approach provides a practical method for experimentally extracting QMI, readily applicable in platforms such as superconducting qubits. Moreover, this work will establishes a general framework for reconstructing other nonlocal observables, including Fisher information and out-of-time-ordered correlators.
The area law-like scaling of local quantum entropies is the central characteristic of the entanglement inherent in quantum fields, many-body systems, and spacetime. Whilst the area law is primarily associated with the entanglement structure of the underlying quantum state, we here show that it equally manifests in classical entropies over measurement distributions when vacuum contributions dictated by the uncertainty principle are subtracted. Using the examples of the Gaussian ground and thermal states, but also the non-Gaussian particle state of a relativistic scalar field, we present analytical and numerical area laws for the entropies of various distributions and unveil how quantities of widespread interest such as the central charge and the (local) temperature are encoded in classical observables. With our approach, quantum entropies are no longer necessary to probe quantum phenomena, thereby rendering area laws and other quantum features directly accessible to theoretical models of high complexity as well as state-of-the-art experiments.