We present a controllable quantum spin-chain model that reproduces the Page curve (the rise-and-fall of bipartite entanglement expected in black-hole evaporation), using only local interactions and a kinematic reduction of the subsystem size. Two transverse-field Ising chains are coupled to form a pure bipartite state; Hawking-like evaporation is implemented by dynamically shrinking the 'system' chain and enlarging the 'environment' chain, while unitary real-time evolution is simulated with matrix product state (MPS) tensor networks. The characteristic Page curve profile emerges robustly under this controlled subsystem resizing and notably persists even when the explicit Hamiltonian coupling across the boundary is set to zero, demonstrating that shrinking Hilbert-space dimension alone can generate Page curve behaviour. We show that the detailed shape of the curve depends on the internal information dynamics: operation at criticality yields a smooth profile, whereas moving away from criticality distorts entanglement growth and decay. These results position locally interacting spin chains as a realistic platform for probing black-hole-inspired information dynamics on current quantum hardware.
We present a controllable quantum spin-chain model that reproduces the Page curve (the rise-and-fall of bipartite entanglement expected in black-hole evaporation), using only local interactions and a kinematic reduction of the subsystem size. Two transverse-field Ising chains are coupled to form a pure bipartite state; Hawking-like evaporation is implemented by dynamically shrinking the 'system' chain and enlarging the 'environment' chain, while unitary real-time evolution is simulated with matrix product state (MPS) tensor networks. The characteristic Page curve profile emerges robustly under this controlled subsystem resizing and notably persists even when the explicit Hamiltonian coupling across the boundary is set to zero, demonstrating that shrinking Hilbert-space dimension alone can generate Page curve behaviour. We show that the detailed shape of the curve depends on the internal information dynamics: operation at criticality yields a smooth profile, whereas moving away from criticality distorts entanglement growth and decay. These results position locally interacting spin chains as a realistic platform for probing black-hole-inspired information dynamics on current quantum hardware.
The core of the black hole information paradox lies in whether Hawking radiation leads to information loss. Based on connectivity engineering, we construct a minimal, gravity-free spin network. By calculating the mutual information and fidelity across different bipartition sizes, we reproduce the complete Page curve. Numerical results show that the peak of mutual information in the geometrically decoupled network (k=3) exhibits a non-trivial scaling behavior with the connectivity k, and reaches saturation at k=3 (with a peak approximately 1.49 times that of the normal network). This not only reveals the reshaping of entanglement capacity by geometric topology but also establishes a topological upper bound for the Page curve peak. Fidelity analysis further reveals that in the late stages of evaporation, the residual subsystem tends towards purification, with the target state fidelity significantly rising to approximately 0.52, which is weakly sensitive to k. This indicates that information is not completely thermalized but exists in a highly compressed global correlation form within the entanglement structure of the black hole residue and external radiation. This model provides a deterministic and strictly reproducible discrete physical benchmark for studying black hole information dynamics.
Generic nonequilibrium many-body systems display a linear growth of bipartite entanglement entropy in time, followed by a volume law saturation. In stark contrast, the Page curve dynamics of black-hole physics shows that the entropy peaks at the Page time t Page and then decreases to zero. Here, we investigate such Page-like behavior of the von Neumann entropy in a model of strongly correlated spinless fermions in a typical system-environment setup and characterize the properties of the Page curve dynamics in the presence of interactions using numerically exact matrix product states methods. The two phases of growth, namely, linear growth and bending down, are shown to be separated by a nonanalyticity in the min-entropy before t Page , which separates two different quantum phases, realized as the respective ground states of the corresponding entanglement (or equivalently, modular) Hamiltonian. We confirm and generalize, by introducing interactions, the findings of for a free spinless fermionic chain where the corresponding entanglement Hamiltonian undergoes a quantum phase transition at the point of nonanalyticity. However, in the presence of interactions, a scaling analysis gives a nonzero critical time for the nonanalyticity in the thermodynamic limit only for weak to intermediate interaction strengths, while the dynamics leading to the nonanalyticity becomes for interactions large enough. We present a physical picture explaining these findings.
We study entanglement transfer in a minimal model of two qubits that are coupled with one another through an antiferromagnetic Heisenberg exchange (J~), and where one of them is additionally coupled to a fermionic environment through another antiferromagnetic Heisenberg exchange (JK). By tuning the coupling ratio JK/J~, the system undergoes a quantum phase transition at T=0, accompanied by a redistribution of entanglement from the d′−d qubit-subsystem to the environment. Remarkably, the resulting physics exhibits properties that bear analogy with a quantum-information theoretic perspective of the physics of black hole thermodynamics. Carefully selected bipartite and tripartite mutual information measures displays behaviour analogous to the dynamical evolution of black hole entropy, Hawking entropy, and the Page curve expected during the process of evaporation. An effective temperature scale is obtained from the variation of the ground state energy with respect to changes in the bipartite mutual information between the subsystem and the bath. A steady growth of this temperature with the coupling ratio resembles that of the Hawking temperature with the inverse mass of the black hole. Concomitantly, the emergence of non-Fermi liquid behaviour observed near the quantum critical point and in the strong-coupling phase resembles strange-metal-like physics expected near the event horizon from a holographic duality perspective. Our results establish the minimal model as a platform for studying entanglement transfer and information scrambling within a fully unitary quantum framework, and offer new insights into a resolution of the black hole information paradox.
The entanglement entropy of a black hole and that of its Hawking radiation are expected to follow the so-called Page curve: After an increase in line with Hawking’s calculation, it is expected to decrease back to zero once the black hole has fully evaporated, as demanded by unitarity. Recently, a simple system-plus-bath model has been proposed which shows a similar behavior. Here, we make a general argument as to why such a Page-curve-like entanglement dynamics should be expected to hold generally for system-plus-bath models at small coupling and low temperatures, when the system is initialized in a pure state far from equilibrium. The interaction with the bath will then generate entanglement entropy, but it eventually has to decrease to the value prescribed by the corresponding mean-force Gibbs state. Under those conditions, it is close to the system ground state. We illustrate this on two paradigmatic open-quantum-system models, the exactly solvable harmonic quantum Brownian motion and the spin-boson model, which we study numerically. In the first example we find that the intermediate entropy of an initially localized impurity is higher for more localized initial states. In the second example, for an impurity initialized in the excited state, the Page time—when the entropy reaches its maximum—occurs when the excitation has half decayed. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
A bstract If the evaporation of a black hole formed from a pure state is unitary, the entanglement entropy of the Hawking radiation should follow the Page curve, increasing from zero until near the halfway point of the evaporation, and then decreasing back to zero. The general argument for the Page curve is based on the assumption that the quantum state of the black hole plus radiation during the evaporation process is typical. In this paper, we show that the Page curve can result from a simple dynamical input in the evolution of the black hole, based on a recently proposed signature of quantum chaos, without resorting to typicality. Our argument is based on what we refer to as the “operator gas” approach, which allows one to understand the evolution of the microstate of the black hole from generic features of the Heisenberg evolution of operators. One key feature which leads to the Page curve is the possibility of dynamical processes where operators in the “gas” can “jump” outside the black hole, which we refer to as void formation processes. Such processes are initially exponentially suppressed, but dominate after a certain time scale, which can be used as a dynamical definition of the Page time. In the Hayden-Preskill protocol for young and old black holes, we show that void formation is also responsible for the transfer of information from the black hole to the radiation. We conjecture that void formation may provide a microscopic explanation for the recent semi-classical prescription of including islands in the calculation of the entanglement entropy of the radiation.
Quantum corrections to the entanglement entropy of matter fields interacting with dynamical gravity have proven to be very important in the study of the black hole information problem. We consider a one-particle excited state of a massive scalar field infalling in a pure AdS3geometry and compute these corrections for bulk subregions anchored on the AdS boundary. In the dual CFT2, the state is given by the insertion of a local primary operator and its evolution thereafter. We calculate the area and bulk entanglement entropy corrections at order O(N0), ON0, both in AdS and its CFT dual. The two calculations match, thus providing a non-trivial check of the FLM formula in a dynamical setting. Further, we observe that the bulk entanglement entropy follows a Page curve. We explain the precise sense in which our setup can be interpreted as a simple model of black hole evaporation and comment on the implications for the information problem.