English

Pseudo Entropy in Free Quantum Field Theories

High Energy Physics - Theory 2021-03-03 v2 Statistical Mechanics Quantum Physics

Abstract

Pseudo entropy is an interesting quantity with a simple gravity dual, which generalizes entanglement entropy such that it depends on both an initial and a final state. Here we reveal the basic properties of pseudo entropy in quantum field theories by numerically calculating this quantity for a set of two-dimensional free scalar field theories and the Ising spin chain. We extend the Gaussian method for pseudo entropy in free scalar theories with two parameters: mass mm and dynamical exponent zz. This computation finds two novel properties of Pseudo entropy which we conjecture to be universal in field theories, in addition to an area law behavior. One is a saturation behavior and the other one is non-positivity of the difference between pseudo entropy and averaged entanglement entropy. Moreover, our numerical results for the Ising chain imply that pseudo entropy can play a role as a new quantum order parameter which detects whether two states are in the same quantum phase or not.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2011.09648,
  title  = {Pseudo Entropy in Free Quantum Field Theories},
  author = {Ali Mollabashi and Noburo Shiba and Tadashi Takayanagi and Kotaro Tamaoka and Zixia Wei},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.09648},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

7 pages, revtex, 5 figures + 22 pages supplementary material. v2: minor improvements, matches PRL version

R2 v1 2026-06-23T20:21:44.571Z