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arXiv:2608.29329

Inequalities and Positivity in Modular Flowed Entanglement Entropy

Liangyu Chen

Published Aug 29, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

The modular Hamiltonian plays an important role in quantum information theory, quantum field theory, and the AdS/CFT correspondence. In this paper, we study a specific dynamical setup: starting from the tensor product of the reduced density matrices of a reference state, we evolve this product state under the modular flow generated by the reference state itself. We then investigate the resulting change in the entanglement entropy of a given region, which we call the modular entanglement shift (MES). Unlike evolution under a fixed quantum channel, this modular evolution obeys no general principle requiring the MES to have a definite sign. For a bipartition into subsystems A and B, we establish an exact entropy balance: the sum of the MESs for A and B equals the mutual information generated along the orbit. Consequently, their sum is nonnegative, even though either individual shift may be negative. For two disjoint intervals in the vacuum of a two-dimensional conformal field theory, however, we prove that a global conformal involution exchanging the intervals forces the two MESs to be equal. It follows that each MES is nonnegative along the modular flow. We establish this result both using a conformally transported regulator and intrinsically in terms of Araki relative entropy. Finally, we identify the modular-flow orbit with a Connes cocycle orbit and discuss possible applications to the AdS/CFT correspondence.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2608.29329

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The modular Hamiltonian plays an important role in quantum information theory, quantum field theory, and the AdS/CFT correspondence. In this paper, we study a specific dynamical setup: starting from the tensor product of the reduced density matrices of a reference state, we evolve this product state under the modular flow generated by the reference state itself. We then investigate the resulting change in the entanglement entropy of a given region, which we call the modular entanglement shift (MES). Unlike evolution under a fixed quantum channel, this modular evolution obeys no general principle requiring the MES to have a definite sign. For a bipartition into subsystems A and B, we establish an exact entropy balance: the sum of the MESs for A and B equals the mutual information generated along the orbit. Consequently, their sum is nonnegative, even though either individual shift may be negative. For two disjoint intervals in the vacuum of a two-dimensional conformal field theory, however, we prove that a global conformal involution exchanging the intervals forces the two MESs to be equal. It follows that each MES is nonnegative along the modular flow. We establish this result both using a conformally transported regulator and intrinsically in terms of Araki relative entropy. Finally, we identify the modular-flow orbit with a Connes cocycle orbit and discuss possible applications to the AdS/CFT correspondence.
Abstract The modular Hamiltonian of reduced states, given essentially by the logarithm of the reduced density matrix, plays an important role within the AdS/CFT correspondence in view of its relation to quantum information. In particular, it is an essential ingredient for quantum information measures of distances between states, such as the relative entropy and the Fisher information metric. However, the modular Hamiltonian is known explicitly only for a few examples. For a family of states ρ λ that is parametrized by a scalar λ, the first order contribution in λ∼=λ−λ0 \overset{\sim }{\lambda } = \lambda -{\lambda}_0 λ∼=λ−λ0​ λ ∼ = λ − λ 0 of the modular Hamiltonian to the relative entropy between ρλ and a reference state ρλ 0 is completely determined by the entanglement entropy, via the first law of entanglement. For several examples, e.g. for ball-shaped regions in the ground state of CFTs, higher order contributions are known to vanish. In these cases the modular Hamiltonian contributes to the Fisher information metric in a trivial way. We investigate under which conditions the modular Hamiltonian provides a non-trivial contribution to the Fisher information metric, i.e. when the contribution of the modular Hamiltonian to the relative entropy is of higher order in λ∼ \overset{\sim }{\lambda } λ∼ λ ∼ . We consider one-parameter families of reduced states on two entangling regions that form an entanglement plateau, i.e. the entanglement entropies of the two regions saturate the Araki-Lieb inequality. We show that in general, at least one of the relative entropies of the two entangling regions is expected to involve λ∼ \overset{\sim }{\lambda } λ∼ λ ∼ contributions of higher order from the modular Hamiltonian. Furthermore, we consider the implications of this observation for prominent AdS/CFT examples that form entanglement plateaux in the large N limit.
A bstract We study the modular Hamiltonian and the entanglement entropy of the BMS-invariant free fermion model. Starting from the modular Hamiltonian on a half-line interval, we calculate the modular Hamiltonian for a region consisting of two disjoint intervals using the uniformization map and a background field method. The resulting modular Hamiltonian contains a local term which generates a geometrical flow, and a bi-local term which mixes operators between the two intervals. We further derive a relation between Wightman functions and the modular Hamiltonian using both diagonalization and a coherent state method. This enables us to compute the entanglement entropy for multi-disjoint intervals. Our explicit results in the BMS free fermion model are compatible with earlier ones based on symmetry and holography.
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In the framework of Algebraic Quantum Field Theory, several operator algebraic notions of entanglement entropy can be associated with any pair of causally disjoint spacetime regions SA\mathcal{S}_ASA​ and SB\mathcal{S}_BSB​ with positive relative distance. Among them, the canonical entanglement entropy is defined as the von Neumann entropy of a canonical intermediate type I factor. In this work, we show that the canonical entanglement entropy of the vacuum state is finite for a broad class of conformal nets including the U(1)U(1)U(1)-current model and the SU(n)SU(n)SU(n)-loop group models. Since previous studies suggest that this finiteness property is related to nuclearity properties of the system, we show that the mutual information is finite in any local QFT satisfying a modular ppp-nuclearity condition for some 0<p<10 < p < 10<p<1. A similar finiteness result is established for another notion of entanglement entropy introduced in this paper. We conclude with remarks for future work in this direction.