English

Relative entropy in scattering and the S-matrix bootstrap

High Energy Physics - Theory 2020-12-04 v5 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Quantum Physics

Abstract

We consider entanglement measures in 2-2 scattering in quantum field theories, focusing on relative entropy which distinguishes two different density matrices. Relative entropy is investigated in several cases which include ϕ4\phi^4 theory, chiral perturbation theory (χPT\chi PT) describing pion scattering and dilaton scattering in type II superstring theory. We derive a high energy bound on the relative entropy using known bounds on the elastic differential cross-sections in massive QFTs. In χPT\chi PT, relative entropy close to threshold has simple expressions in terms of ratios of scattering lengths. Definite sign properties are found for the relative entropy which are over and above the usual positivity of relative entropy in certain cases. We then turn to the recent numerical investigations of the S-matrix bootstrap in the context of pion scattering. By imposing these sign constraints and the ρ\rho resonance, we find restrictions on the allowed S-matrices. By performing hypothesis testing using relative entropy, we isolate two sets of S-matrices living on the boundary which give scattering lengths comparable to experiments but one of which is far from the 1-loop χPT\chi PT Adler zeros. We perform a preliminary analysis to constrain the allowed space further, using ideas involving positivity inside the extended Mandelstam region, and elastic unitarity.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2006.12213,
  title  = {Relative entropy in scattering and the S-matrix bootstrap},
  author = {Anjishnu Bose and Parthiv Haldar and Aninda Sinha and Pritish Sinha and Shaswat S Tiwari},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.12213},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

v5: 83 pages, 21 figures. Typo fixed, reference updates

R2 v1 2026-06-23T16:31:06.372Z