English

Local temperatures and local terms in modular Hamiltonians

High Energy Physics - Theory 2017-03-14 v1 Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

We show there are analogues to the Unruh temperature that can be defined for any quantum field theory and region of the space. These local temperatures are defined using relative entropy with localized excitations. We show important restrictions arise from relative entropy inequalities and causal propagation between Cauchy surfaces. These suggest a large amount of universality for local temperatures, specially the ones affecting null directions. For regions with any number of intervals in two space-time dimensions the local temperatures might arise from a term in the modular Hamiltonian proportional to the stress tensor. We argue this term might be universal, with a coefficient that is the same for any theory, and check analytically and numerically this is the case for free massive scalar and Dirac fields. In dimensions d3d\ge 3 the local terms in the modular Hamiltonian producing these local temperatures cannot be formed exclusively from the stress tensor. For a free scalar field we classify the structure of the local terms.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1611.08517,
  title  = {Local temperatures and local terms in modular Hamiltonians},
  author = {Raul Arias and David Blanco and Horacio Casini and Marina Huerta},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1611.08517},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

35 pages, 12 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T17:04:26.239Z