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Real-space renormalization, error correction and conditional expectations

Keiichiro Furuya, Nima Lashkari, Shoy Ouseph

Published Dec 30, 2020• 1 citation
OpenAlex

Abstract

We show that the real-space renormalization group (RG), as a map from the observable algebra to the subalgebra of long-distance observables, is an error correction code, best described by a conditional expectation. It is comprised of a coarse-graining step followed by an isometric embedding. The coarse-graining is the error map and the long-distance observables are the correctable operators. We show that if there is a state that is preserved under renormalization the coarse-graining step is the Petz dual of the isometric embedding (the Petz map). We demonstrate that a set of states are preserved under this map if and only if their pairwise relative entropies do not change when we restrict to the long-distance observables. We study the operator algebra quantum error correction in the GNS Hilbert space which applies to any quantum system including the local algebra of quantum field theory. We show that the recovery map is an isometric embedding of the correctable subalgebra. Similar to the RG, the composition of the error map followed by the recovery map forms a conditional expectation (a projection in the GNS Hilbert space). In gauge/gravity dualities, the bulk relative entropy of holographic states is the same as their boundary relative entropies which implies that the holographic map is an error correction code, and hence a conditional expectation. It follows that the boundary to the bulk map is a Petz map.

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We show that the real-space renormalization group (RG), as a map from the observable algebra to the subalgebra of long-distance observables, is an error correction code, best described by a conditional expectation. It is comprised of a coarse-graining step followed by an isometric embedding. The coarse-graining is the error map and the long-distance observables are the correctable operators. We show that if there is a state that is preserved under renormalization the coarse-graining step is the Petz dual of the isometric embedding (the Petz map). We demonstrate that a set of states are preserved under this map if and only if their pairwise relative entropies do not change when we restrict to the long-distance observables. We study the operator algebra quantum error correction in the GNS Hilbert space which applies to any quantum system including the local algebra of quantum field theory. We show that the recovery map is an isometric embedding of the correctable subalgebra. Similar to the RG, the composition of the error map followed by the recovery map forms a conditional expectation (a projection in the GNS Hilbert space). In gauge/gravity dualities, the bulk relative entropy of holographic states is the same as their boundary relative entropies which implies that the holographic map is an error correction code, and hence a conditional expectation. It follows that the boundary to the bulk map is a Petz map.
Abstract There are two parts to this work: first, we study the error correction properties of the real-space renormalization group (RG). The long-distance operators are the (approximately) correctable operators encoded in the physical algebra of short-distance operators. This is closely related to modeling the holographic map as a quantum error correction code. As opposed to holography, the real-space RG of a many-body quantum system does not have the complementary recovery property. We discuss the role of large N and a large gap in the spectrum of operators in the emergence of complementary recovery. Second, we study the operator algebra exact quantum error correction for any von Neumann algebra. We show that similar to the finite dimensional case, for any error map in between von Neumann algebras the Petz dual of the error map is a recovery map if the inclusion of the correctable subalgebra of operators has finite index.
Renormalization group (RG) is a core concept from statistical mechanics to quantum field theory, yet its schemes differ widely across literature. We formulate Wilsonian RG for generic, including finite-dimensional, quantum systems as a quantum channel combining coarse graining with isometric rescaling, whose Kraus representation yields pure conditional trajectories for pure inputs and recovers mixed-state flows upon averaging. We then develop an algebraic extension without assuming tensor-product factorization: the retained low-energy algebra is constructed from the one-particle spectrum, and coarse graining is a conditional expectation onto it. Identifying the channel's Cesàro mean with a resource-destroying map onto fixed states establishes a resource theory of RG and yields a relative-entropy monotone without variational optimization. For thermal states in the zero-temperature limit, the resulting Bogoliubov--Kubo--Mori metric per unit spacetime volume is proportional to the Zamolodchikov metric, directly relating the resource density to c−cIRc-c_{\rm IR}c−cIR​ near a two-dimensional IR fixed point. We also introduce the relative entropy of coarse graining to measure discarded UV information, prove its monotonicity along successive coarse grainings, and evaluate it holographically in global AdS3\mathrm{AdS}_3AdS3​.
We study the holographic map in AdS/CFT, as modeled by a quantum error correcting code with exact complementary recovery. We show that the map is determined by local conditional expectations acting on the operator algebras of the boundary/physical Hilbert space. Several existing results in the literature follow easily from this perspective. The Black Hole area law, and more generally the Ryu-Takayanagi area operator, arises from a central sum of entropies on the relative commutant. These entropies are determined in a state independent way by the conditional expectation. The conditional expectation can also be found via a minimization procedure, similar to the minimization involved in the RT formula. For a local net of algebras associated to connected boundary regions, we show the complementary recovery condition is equivalent to the existence of a standard net of inclusions -- an abstraction of the mathematical structure governing QFT superselection sectors given by Longo and Rehren. For a code consisting of algebras associated to two disjoint regions of the boundary theory we impose an extra condition, dubbed dual-additivity, that gives rise to phase transitions between different entanglement wedges. Dual-additive codes naturally give rise to a new split code subspace, and an entropy bound controls which subspace and associated algebra is reconstructable. We also discuss known shortcomings of exact complementary recovery as a model of holography. For example, these codes are not able to accommodate holographic violations of additive for overlapping regions. We comment on how approximate codes can fix these issues.
In the context of quantum theories of spacetime, one overarching question is how quantum information in the bulk spacetime is encoded holographically in boundary degrees of freedom.It is particularly interesting to understand the correspondence between bulk subregions and boundary subregions in order to address the emergence of locality in the bulk quantum spacetime.For the AdS/CFT correspondence, it is known that this bulk information is encoded redundantly on the boundary in the form of an error-correcting code.Having access only to a subregion of the boundary is as if part of the holographic code has been damaged by noise and rendered inaccessible.In quantum-information science, the problem of recovering information from a damaged code is addressed by the theory of universal recovery channels.We apply and extend this theory to address the problem of relating bulk and boundary subregions in AdS/CFT, focusing on a conjecture known as entanglement wedge reconstruction.Existing work relies on the exact equivalence between bulk and boundary relative entropies, but these are only approximately equal in bulk effective field theory, and in similar situations it is known that predictions from exact entropic equalities can be qualitatively incorrect.We show that the framework of universal recovery channels provides a robust demonstration of the entanglement wedge reconstruction conjecture as well as new physical insights.Most notably, we find that a bulk operator acting in a given boundary region's entanglement wedge can be expressed as the response of the boundary region's modular Hamiltonian to a perturbation of the bulk state in the direction of the bulk operator.This formula can be interpreted as a noncommutative version of Bayes's rule that attempts to undo the noise induced by restricting to only a portion of the boundary.To reach these conclusions, we extend the theory of universal recovery channels to finite-dimensional operator algebras and demonstrate that recovery channels approximately preserve the multiplicative structure of the operator algebra.
At the heart of recent progress in AdS/CFT is the question of subregion duality, or entanglement wedge reconstruction: which part(s) of the boundary CFT are dual to a given subregion of the bulk? This question can be answered by appealing to the quantum error correcting properties of holography, and it was recently shown that robust bulk (entanglement wedge) reconstruction can be achieved using a universal recovery channel known as the twirled Petz map. In short, one can use the twirled Petz map to recover bulk data from a subset of the boundary. However, this map involves an averaging procedure over bulk and boundary modular time, and hence it can be somewhat intractable to evaluate in practice. We show that a much simpler channel, the Petz map, is sufficient for entanglement wedge reconstruction for any code space of fixed finite dimension – no twirling is required. Moreover, the error in the reconstruction will always be non-perturbatively small. From a quantum information perspective, we prove a general theorem extending the use of the Petz map as a general-purpose recovery channel to subsystem and operator algebra quantum error correction.
We show that in renormalization group (RG) flow the low-energy states form a code subspace that is approximately protected against the local short-distance errors. To demonstrate how general this connection is, we consider three examples: the classical Ising model in one dimension, free relativistic scalar quantum field theory (QFT) in two spacetime dimensions, and holographic field theories as examples of strongly coupled systems. As a concrete example of real-space RG in QFT, we consider the continuous multiscale renormalization ansatz for massive free fields and show that the low-energy coherent states are approximately protected from the quantum errors caused by the high-energy localized coherent operators. In holographic RG flows, we study the phase transition in the entanglement wedge of a single region and argue that one needs to define the price and the distance of the code with respect to the reconstructable wedge.