English

What surface maximizes entanglement entropy?

High Energy Physics - Theory 2014-10-29 v2 Statistical Mechanics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology Differential Geometry

Abstract

For a given quantum field theory, provided the area of the entangling surface is fixed, what surface maximizes entanglement entropy? We analyze the answer to this question in four and higher dimensions. Surprisingly, in four dimensions the answer is related to a mathematical problem of finding surfaces which minimize the Willmore (bending) energy and eventually to the Willmore conjecture. We propose a generalization of the Willmore energy in higher dimensions and analyze its minimizers in a general class of topologies Sm×SnS^m\times S^n and make certain observations and conjectures which may have some mathematical significance.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1407.4719,
  title  = {What surface maximizes entanglement entropy?},
  author = {Amin Faraji Astaneh and Gary Gibbons and Sergey N. Solodukhin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1407.4719},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

21 pages, 2 figures; V2: typos fixed, Refs. added

R2 v1 2026-06-22T05:06:44.376Z