English

Bare Quantum Null Energy Condition

High Energy Physics - Theory 2018-02-21 v4 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

The quantum null energy condition (QNEC) is a conjectured relation between a null version of quantum field theory energy and derivatives of quantum field theory von Neumann entropy. In some cases, divergences cancel between these two terms and the QNEC is intrinsically finite. We study the more general case here where they do not and argue that a QNEC can still hold for bare (unrenormalized) quantities. While the original QNEC applied only to locally stationary null congruences in backgrounds that solve semiclassical theories of quantum gravity, at least in the formal perturbation theory at a small Planck length, the quantum focusing conjecture can be viewed as the special case of our bare QNEC for which the metric is on shell.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1711.02330,
  title  = {Bare Quantum Null Energy Condition},
  author = {Zicao Fu and Donald Marolf},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1711.02330},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

5 pages, no figure; v2: minor corrections; v3: modifications to address referee comments; v4: title and abstract changed

R2 v1 2026-06-22T22:38:21.204Z