English

Entanglement density and gravitational thermodynamics

High Energy Physics - Theory 2015-05-27 v3 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

In an attempt to find a quasi-local measure of quantum entanglement, we introduce the concept of entanglement density in relativistic quantum theories. This density is defined in terms of infinitesimal variations of the region whose entanglement we monitor, and in certain cases can be mapped to the variations of the generating points of the associated domain of dependence. We argue that strong sub-additivity constrains the entanglement density to be positive semi-definite. Examining this density in the holographic context, we map its positivity to a statement of integrated null energy condition in the gravity dual. We further speculate that this may be mapped to a statement analogous to the second law of black hole thermodynamics, for the extremal surface.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1412.5472,
  title  = {Entanglement density and gravitational thermodynamics},
  author = {Jyotirmoy Bhattacharya and Veronika E. Hubeny and Mukund Rangamani and Tadashi Takayanagi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1412.5472},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

6 pages, 3 figures. v2: added refs. v3: minor clarifications and fixed typos

R2 v1 2026-06-22T07:35:18.391Z