Contributor info: Prof. Qiang Wen

Debarshi Basu, Jiong Lin, Yizhou Lu, Qiang Wen

SciPost Phys. 15, 227 (2023) · published 6 December 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

In the context of partial entanglement entropy (PEE), we study the entanglement structure of the island phases realized in several 2-dimensional holographic set-ups. From a pure quantum information perspective, the entanglement islands emerge from the self-encoding property of the system, which gives us new insights on the construction of the PEE and the physical interpretation of two-point functions of twist operators in island phases. With the contributions from the entanglement islands properly taken into account, we give a generalized prescription to construct PEE and balanced partial entanglement entropy (BPE). Here the ownerless island region, which lies inside the island $\text{Is}(AB)$ of $A\cup B$ but outside $\text{Is}(A)\cup \text{Is}(B)$, plays a crucial role. Remarkably, we find that under different assignments for the ownerless island, we get different BPEs, which exactly correspond to different saddles of the entanglement wedge cross-section (EWCS) in the entanglement wedge of $A\cup B$. The assignments can be settled by choosing the one that minimizes the BPE. Furthermore, under this assignment we study the PEE and give a geometric picture for the PEE in holography, which is consistent with the geometric picture in the no-island phases.

Qiang Wen, Haocheng Zhong

SciPost Phys. 13, 056 (2022) · published 9 September 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

The balanced partial entanglement (BPE) was observed to give the reflected entropy and the entanglement wedge cross-section (EWCS) for various mixed states in different theories \cite{Wen:2021qgx,Camargo:2022mme}. It can be calculated in different purifications, and is conjectured to be independent from purifications. In this paper we calculate the BPE and the EWCS in generic covariant scenarios in two-dimensional CFTs with and without gravitational anomalies, and find that they coincide with the reflected entropy. In covariant configurations we determine the partition for the purifying system with the help of the gravitational anomalies, and we extend our discussion to topological massive gravity (TMG). We give the first prescription to evaluate the entropy quantity associated to the EWCS beyond Einstein gravity, i.e. the correction to the EWCS from the Chern-Simons term in TMG. Apart from the gravity theory and geometry, further input from the mixed state should be taken into account.

Hugo A. Camargo, Pratik Nandy, Qiang Wen, Haocheng Zhong

SciPost Phys. 12, 137 (2022) · published 21 April 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Recently in Ref. [1], one of the authors introduced the balanced partial entanglement (BPE), which has been proposed to be dual to the entanglement wedge cross-section (EWCS). In this paper, we explicitly demonstrate that the BPE could be considered as a proper measure of the total intrinsic correlation between two subsystems in a mixed state. The total correlation includes certain crossing correlations, which are minimized by particular balance conditions. By constructing a class of purifications from Euclidean path-integrals, we find that the balanced crossing correlations show universality and can be considered as the generalization of the Markov gap for the canonical purification. We also test the relation between the BPE and the EWCS in three-dimensional asymptotically flat holography. We find that the balanced crossing correlation vanishes for the field theory invariant under BMS$_3$ symmetry (BMSFT) and dual to the Einstein gravity, indicating the possibility of a perfect Markov recovery. We further elucidate these crossing correlations as a signature of tripartite entanglement and explain their interpretation in both AdS and non-AdS holography.

Muxin Han, Qiang Wen

SciPost Phys. Core 5, 020 (2022) · published 12 April 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We study the entanglement contour and partial entanglement entropy (PEE) in quantum field theories in 3 and higher dimensions. The entanglement entropy is evaluated from a certain limit of the PEE with a geometric regulator. In the context of the entanglement contour, we classify the geometric regulators, study their difference from the UV regulators. Furthermore, for spherical regions in conformal field theories (CFTs) we find the exact relation between the UV and geometric cutoff, which clarifies some subtle points in the previous literature. We clarify a subtle point of the additive linear combination (ALC) proposal for PEE in higher dimensions. The subset entanglement entropies in the ALC proposal should all be evaluated as a limit of the PEE while excluding a fixed class of local-short-distance correlation. Unlike the 2-dimensional configurations, naively plugging the entanglement entropy calculated with a UV cutoff will spoil the validity of the ALC proposal. We derive the entanglement contour function for spherical regions, annuli and spherical shells in the vacuum state of general-dimensional CFTs on a hyperplane.

Muxin Han, Qiang Wen

SciPost Phys. 11, 058 (2021) · published 14 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Entanglement entropy satisfies a first law-like relation, which equates the first order perturbation of the entanglement entropy for the region $A$ to the first order perturbation of the expectation value of the modular Hamiltonian, $\delta S_{A}=\delta \langle K_A \rangle$. We propose that this relation has a finer version which states that, the first order perturbation of the entanglement contour equals to the first order perturbation of the contour of the modular Hamiltonian, i.e. $\delta s_{A}(\textbf{x})=\delta \langle k_{A}(\textbf{x})\rangle$. Here the contour functions $s_{A}(\textbf{x})$ and $k_{A}(\textbf{x})$ capture the contribution from the degrees of freedom at $\textbf{x}$ to $S_{A}$ and $K_A$ respectively. In some simple cases $k_{A}(\textbf{x})$ is determined by the stress tensor. We also evaluate the quantum correction to the entanglement contour using the fine structure of the entanglement wedge and the additive linear combination (ALC) proposal for partial entanglement entropy (PEE) respectively. The fine structure picture shows that, the quantum correction to the boundary PEE can be identified as a bulk PEE of certain bulk region. While the \textit{ALC proposal} shows that the quantum correction to the boundary PEE comes from the linear combination of bulk entanglement entropy. We focus on holographic theories with local modular Hamiltonian and configurations of quantum field theories where the \textit{ALC proposal} applies.