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In this paper, we study the fine structure of entanglement in holographic two-dimensional boundary conformal field theories (BCFT) in terms of the spatially resolved quasilocal extension of entanglement entropy — entanglement contour. We find that the boundary induces discontinuities in the contour revealing hidden localization-delocalization patterns of the entanglement degrees of freedom. Moreover, we observe the formation of “islands” where the entanglement contour vanishes identically implying that these regions do not contribute to the entanglement at all. We argue that these phenomena are the manifestation of the entanglement islands recently discussed in the literature. We apply the entanglement contour proposal to the recently discussed BCFT black hole models reproducing the Page curve — moving mirror model and the pair of BCFT in the thermofield double state. From the viewpoint of entanglement contour, the Page curve also carries the imprint of strong delocalization caused by dynamical entanglement islands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study phase transitions and critical phenomena in nonequilibrium steady states controlled by an electric field. We employ the D3/D7 model in the presence of a charge density and electric field at finite temperatures. The system undergoes the first-order and the second-order phase transitions under the variation of the electric field in the presence of dissipation. We numerically find that the critical exponents which we define for the nonequilibrium phase transition in this model take the mean-field values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we develop a novel way to perturbatively calculate Rényi relative divergences Dγ(ρ‖σ) = trργσ1 − γ and related quantities without using replica trick as well as analytic continuation. We explicitly determine the form of the perturbative term at any order by an integral along the modular flow of the unperturbed state. By applying the prescription to a class of reduced density matrices in conformal field theory, we find that the second order term of certain linear combination of the divergences has a holographic expression in terms of bulk symplectic form, which is a one parameter generalization of the statement "Fisher information = Bulk canonical energy". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that the strongly coupled field theory holographically dual to the Gubser-Rocha anti-de-Sitter Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton theory describes not a single non-trivial AdS2 IR fixed point, but a one-parameter family. It is dual to a local quantum critical phase instead of a quantum critical point. This result follows from a detailed analysis of the possible quantizations of the gravitational theory that is consistent with the thermodynamics of the analytical Gubser-Rocha black hole solution. The analytic Gubser-Rocha black hole is only a 2-parameter subset of all possible solutions, and we construct other members numerically. These new numerical solutions correspond to turning on an additional scalar charge. Moreover, each solution has multiple holographic interpretations depending on the quantization chosen. In one particular quantization involving a multitrace deformation the scalar charge is a marginal operator. In other quantizations where the marginal multitrace operator is turned off, the analytic Gubser-Rocha black hole does not describe a finite temperature conformal fluid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We employ the Noether procedure to derive a general formula for the radially conserved heat current in AdS planar black holes with certain transverse and traceless perturbations, for a general class of gravity theories. For Einstein gravity, the general higher-order Lovelock gravities and also a class of Horndeski gravities, we derive the boundary stress tensor and show that the resulting boundary heat current matches precisely the bulk Noether current. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In this paper, we study the fine structure of entanglement in holographic two-dimensional boundary conformal field theories (BCFT) in terms of the spatially resolved quasilocal extension of entanglement entropy — entanglement contour. We find that the boundary induces discontinuities in the contour revealing hidden localization-delocalization patterns of the entanglement degrees of freedom. Moreover, we observe the formation of “islands” where the entanglement contour vanishes identically implying that these regions do not contribute to the entanglement at all. We argue that these phenomena are the manifestation of the entanglement islands recently discussed in the literature. We apply the entanglement contour proposal to the recently discussed BCFT black hole models reproducing the Page curve — moving mirror model and the pair of BCFT in the thermofield double state. From the viewpoint of entanglement contour, the Page curve also carries the imprint of strong delocalization caused by dynamical entanglement islands.

In a recent paper, Kiritsis and Li presented a holographic model to study the competition between different orders at finite doping in holographic superconductors. In the present work, we introduce fermions into such model and study the fermionic spectral functions in the normal phase at zero and finite temperatures. Combining analytic and numerical methods, we found that there is a crossover from a strange metal with short lived excitations at small doping, into a Fermi liquid with well defined quasiparticles at large doping. The critical doping at which excitations becomes long lived increases with temperature. The emerging phase diagram is qualitatively similar to that of High Temperature Superconductors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Recent gravity discussions of a traversable wormhole indicate that in holographic systems signals generated by a source could reappear long after they have dissipated, with the need of only performing some simple operations. In this paper we argue the phenomenon, to which we refer as “regenesis”, is universal in general quantum chaotic many-body systems, and elucidate its underlying physics. The essential elements behind the phenomenon are: (i) scrambling which in a chaotic system makes out-of-time-ordered correlation functions (OTOCs) vanish at large times; (ii) the entanglement structure of the state of the system. The latter aspect also implies that the regenesis phenomenon requires fine tuning of the initial state. Compared to other manifestations of quantum chaos such as the initial growth of OTOCs which deals with early times, and a random matrix-type energy spectrum which reflects very large time behavior, regenesis concerns with intermediate times, of order the scrambling time of a system. We also study the phenomenon in detail in general two-dimensional conformal field theories in the large central charge limit, and highlight some interesting features including a resonant enhancement of regenesis signals near the scrambling time and their oscillations in coupling. Finally, we discuss gravity implications of the phenomenon for systems with a gravity dual, arguing that there exist regimes for which traversability of a wormhole is quantum in nature, i.e. cannot be associated with a semi-classical spacetime causal structure.

Using a holographic model, we study quantum field theories with a layer of one CFT surrounded by another CFT, on either a periodic or an infinite direction. We study the vacuum energy density in each CFT as a function of the central charges, the thickness of the layer(s), and the properties of the interfaces between the CFTs. The dual spacetimes in the holographic model include two regions separated by a dynamical interface with some tension. For two or more spatial dimensions, we find that a layer of CFT with more degrees of freedom than the surrounding one can have an anomalously large negative vacuum energy density for certain types of interfaces. The negative energy density (or null-energy density in the direction perpendicular to the interface) becomes arbitrarily large for fixed layer width when the tension of the bulk interface approaches a lower critical value. We argue that in cases where we have large negative energy density, we also have an anomalously high transition temperature to the high-temperature thermal state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We construct a top-down holographic model of Weyl semimetal states using (3 + 1)-dimensional N = 4 supersymmetric SU(Nc) Yang-Mills theory, at large Nc and strong coupling, coupled to a number Nf ≪ Nc of N = 2 hypermultiplets with mass m. A U(1) subgroup of the R-symmetry acts on the hypermultiplet fermions as an axial symmetry. In the presence of a constant external axial gauge field in a spatial direction, b, we find the defining characteristic of a Weyl semi-metal: a quantum phase transition as m/b increases, from a topological state with non-zero anomalous Hall conductivity to a trivial insulator. The transition is first order. Remarkably, the anomalous Hall conductivity is independent of the hypermultiplet mass, taking the value dictated by the axial anomaly. At non-zero temperature the transition remains first order, and the anomalous Hall conductivity acquires non-trivial dependence on the hypermultiplet mass and temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate dispersion relation of Nambu-Goldstone modes in a dissipative system realized by the AdS/CFT correspondence. We employ the D3/D7 model which represents N = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory coupled to N = 2 flavor fields. If we consider massless quarks in the presence of an external magnetic field, the system exhibits the phase transition associated with the spontaneous symmetry breaking of the chiral symmetry. We find that the Nambu-Goldstone modes show a diffusive behavior in the dispersion relation, which agrees with that found with the effective field theory approach. We also study a non-equilibrium steady state which has a constant current flow in the presence of an external electric field. In a non-equilibrium steady state, we find that the Nambu-Goldstone modes show a linear dispersion in the real part of the frequency in addition to the diffusive behavior. Moreover, we analyze the linear dispersion of the Nambu-Goldstone modes in the hydrodynamic approximation. As a result, we find that the linear dispersion can be written as the analytic functions of quantities in the dual field theory. Our results imply that such a linear dispersion is a characteristic behavior of Nambu-Goldstone modes in a non-equilibrium steady state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Relative entropy of entanglement (REE) is an entanglement measure of bipartite mixed states, defined by the minimum of the relative entropy S(ρ AB ||σ AB ) between a given mixed state ρ AB and an arbitrary separable state σ AB . The REE is always bounded by the mutual information I AB = S(ρ AB ||ρ A ⊗ ρ B ) because the latter measures not only quantum entanglement but also classical correlations. In this paper we address the question of to what extent REE can be small compared to the mutual information in conformal field theories (CFTs). For this purpose, we perturbatively compute the relative entropy between the vacuum reduced density matrix ρ AB 0 on disjoint subsystems A ∪ B and arbitrarily separable state σ AB in the limit where two subsystems A and B are well separated, then minimize the relative entropy with respect to the separable states. We argue that the result highly depends on the spectrum of CFT on the subsystems. When we have a few low energy spectrum of operators as in the case where the subsystems consist of finite number of spins in spin chain models, the REE is considerably smaller than the mutual information. However in general our perturbative scheme breaks down, and the REE can be as large as the mutual information.

We establish a systematic framework for studying quantum computational complexity of Gaussian states of charged systems based on Nielsen’s geometric approach. We use this framework to examine the effect of a chemical potential on the dynamics of complexity. As an example, we consider the complexity of a charged thermofield double state constructed from two free massive complex scalar fields in the presence of a chemical potential. We show that this state factorizes between positively and negatively charged modes and demonstrate that this fact can be used to relate it, for each momentum mode separately, to two uncharged thermofield double states with shifted temperatures and times. We evaluate the complexity of formation for the charged thermofield double state, both numerically and in certain analytic expansions. We further present numerical results for the time dependence of complexity. We compare various aspects of these results to those obtained in holography for charged black holes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boundary, defect, and interface RG flows, as exemplified by the famous Kondo model, play a significant role in the theory of quantum fields. We study in detail the holographic dual of a non-conformal supersymmetric impurity in the D1/D5 CFT. Its RG flow bears similarities to the Kondo model, although unlike the Kondo model the CFT is strongly coupled in the holographic regime. The interface we study preserves d = 1 N = 4 supersymmetry and flows to conformal fixed points in both the UV and IR. The interface's UV fixed point is described by d = 1 fermionic degrees of freedom, coupled to a gauge connection on the CFT target space that is induced by the ADHM construction. We briefly discuss its field-theoretic properties before shifting our focus to its holographic dual. We analyze the supergravity dual of this interface RG flow, first in the probe limit and then including gravitational backreaction. In the probe limit, the flow is realized by the puffing up of probe branes on an internal S3 via the Myers effect. We further identify the backreacted supergravity configurations dual to the interface fixed points. These supergravity solutions provide a geometric realization of critical screening of the defect degrees of freedom. This critical screening arises in a way similar to the original Kondo model. We compute the g-factor both in the probe brane approximation and using backreacted supergravity solutions, and show that it decreases from the UV to the IR as required by the g-theorem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract We propose an optimization procedure for Euclidean path-integrals that evaluate CFT wave functionals in arbitrary dimensions. The optimization is performed by minimizing certain functional, which can be interpreted as a measure of computational complexity, with respect to background metrics for the path-integrals. In two dimensional CFTs, this functional is given by the Liouville action. We also formulate the optimization for higher dimensional CFTs and, in various examples, find that the optimized hyperbolic metrics coincide with the time slices of expected gravity duals. Moreover, if we optimize a reduced density matrix, the geometry becomes two copies of the entanglement wedge and reproduces the holographic entanglement entropy. Our approach resembles a continuous tensor network renormalization and provides a concrete realization of the proposed interpretation of AdS/CFT as tensor networks. The present paper is an extended version of our earlier report arXiv:1703.00456 and includes many new results such as evaluations of complexity functionals, energy stress tensor, higher dimensional extensions and time evolutions of thermofield double states.

Abstract For time-independent excited states in conformal field theories, the entanglement entropy of small subsystems satisfies a ‘first law’-like relation, in which the change in entanglement is proportional to the energy within the entangling region. Such a law holds for time-dependent scenarios as long as the state is perturbatively close to the vacuum, but is not expected otherwise. In this paper we use holography to investigate the spread of entanglement entropy for unitary evolutions of special physical interest, the so-called global quenches. We model these using AdS-Vaidya geometries. We find that the first law of entanglement is replaced by a linear response relation, in which the energy density takes the role of the source and is integrated against a time-dependent kernel with compact support. For adiabatic quenches the standard first law is recovered, while for rapid quenches the linear response includes an extra term that encodes the process of thermalization. This extra term has properties that resemble a time-dependent ‘relative entropy’. We propose that this quantity serves as a useful order parameter to characterize far-from-equilibrium excited states. We illustrate our findings with concrete examples, including generic power-law and periodically driven quenches.

The DC resistivity of charge density waves weakly-pinned by disorder is controlled by diffusive, incoherent processes rather than slow momentum relaxation. The corresponding incoherent conductivity can be computed in the limit of zero disorder. We compute this transport coefficient in holographic spatially modulated breaking translations spontaneously. As a by-product of our analysis, we clarify how the boundary heat current is obtained from a conserved bulk current, defined as a suitable generalization of the Iyer-Wald Noether current of the appropriate Killing vector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate a weak version of subsystem eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) for a two-dimensional large central charge conformal field theory by comparing the local equivalence of high energy state and thermal state of canonical ensemble. We evaluate the single-interval Rényi entropy and entanglement entropy for a heavy primary state in short interval expansion. We verify the results of Rényi entropy by two different replica methods. We find nontrivial results at the eighth order of short interval expansion, which include an infinite number of higher order terms in the large central charge expansion. We then evaluate the relative entropy of the reduced density matrices to measure the difference between the heavy primary state and thermal state of canonical ensemble, and find that the aforementioned nontrivial eighth order results make the relative entropy unsuppressed in the large central charge limit. By using Pinsker's and Fannes-Audenaert inequalities, we can exploit the results of relative entropy to yield the lower and upper bounds on trace distance of the excited-state and thermal-state reduced density matrices. Our results are consistent with subsystem weak ETH, which requires the above trace distance is of power-law suppression by the large central charge. However, we are unable to pin down the exponent of power-law suppression. As a byproduct we also calculate the relative entropy to measure the difference between the reduced density matrices of two different heavy primary states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2+1 dimensional quantum Lifshitz model can be generalised to a class of higher dimensional free field theories that exhibit Lifshitz scaling. When the dynamical critical exponent equals the number of spatial dimensions, equal time correlation functions of scaling operators in the generalised quantum Lifshitz model are given by a d-dimensional higher-derivative conformal field theory. Autocorrelation functions in the generalised quantum Lifshitz model in any number of dimensions can on the other hand be expressed in terms of autocorrelation functions of a two-dimensional conformal field theory. This also holds for autocorrelation functions in a strongly coupled Lifshitz field theory with a holographic dual of Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton type. The map to a two-dimensional conformal field theory extends to autocorrelation functions in thermal states and out-of-equilbrium states preserving symmetry under spatial translations and rotations in both types of Lifshitz models. Furthermore, the spectrum of quasinormal modes of scalar field perturbations in Lifshitz black hole backgrounds can be obtained analytically at low spatial momenta and exhibits a linear dispersion relation at z = d. At high momentum, the mode spectrum can be obtained in a WKB approximation and displays very different behaviour compared to holographic duals of conformal field theories. This has implications for thermalisation in strongly coupled Lifshitz field theories with z > 1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the concomitant spontaneous breaking of translation and conformal symmetries by introducing in a CFT a complex scalar operator that acquires a spatially dependent expectation value. The model, inspired by the holographic Q-lattice, provides a privileged setup to study the emergence of phonons from a spontaneous translational symmetry breaking in a conformal field theory and offers valuable hints for the treatment of phonons in QFT at large. We first analyze the Ward identity structure by means of standard QFT techniques, considering both spontaneous and explicit symmetry breaking. Next, by implementing holographic renormalization, we show that the same set of Ward identities holds in the holographic Q-lattice. Eventually, relying on the holographic and QFT results, we study the correlators realizing the symmetry breaking pattern and how they encode information about the low-energy spectrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We construct a family of very simple stationary solutions to gravity coupled to a massless scalar field in global AdS. They involve a constantly rising source for the scalar field at the boundary and thereby we name them pumping solutions. We construct them numerically in D = 4. They are regular and, generically, have negative mass. We perform a study of linear and nonlinear stability and find both stable and unstable branches. In the latter case, solutions belonging to different sub-branches can either decay to black holes or to limiting cycles. This observation motivates the search for non-stationary exactly timeperiodic solutions which we actually construct. We clarify the role of pumping solutions in the context of quasistatic adiabatic quenches. In D = 3 the pumping solutions can be related to other previously known solutions, like magnetic or translationally-breaking backgrounds. From this we derive an analytic expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A closed formula of the universal part of supersymmetric Rényi entropy S for six-dimensional (1, 0) superconformal theories is proposed. Within our arguments, S across a spherical entangling surface is a cubic polynomial of ν = 1/ q, with 4 coefficients expressed as linear combinations of the 't Hooft anomaly coefficients for the R-symmetry and gravitational anomalies. As an application, we establish linear relations between the c-type Weyl anomalies and the 't Hooft anomaly coefficients. We make a conjecture relating the supersymmetric Rényi entropy to an equivariant integral of the anomaly polynomial in even dimensions and check it against known data in 4 d and 6 d. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study black hole solutions of D = 4 Einstein-Maxwell theory coupled to a charged scalar field that are holographically dual to a d = 3 conformal field theory with a non-vanishing chemical potential and constant magnetic field. We numerically construct black hole solutions that are dual to a superfluid phase with a periodic lattice of vortices. For the specific model we investigate, we find that the thermodynamically preferred con- figuration is given by a triangular lattice and moreover the vortices are associated with the lowest Landau level. We also construct black holes describing a lattice of vortices associated with the next to lowest Landau level and while these are not thermodynamically preferred they exhibit some interesting features that could be realised for other holographic models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a simple class of holographic massive gravity models for which the dual field theories break translational invariance spontaneously. We study, in detail, the longitudinal sector of the quasi-normal modes at zero charge density. We identify three hydrodynamic modes in this sector: a pair of sound modes and one diffusion mode. We numerically compute the dispersion relations of the hydrodynamic modes. The obtained speed and the attenuation of the sound modes are in agreement with the hydrodynamic predictions. On the contrary, we surprisingly find disagreement in the case of the diffusive mode; its diffusion constant extracted from the quasi-normal mode data does not agree with the expectations from hydrodynamics. We confirm our numerical results using ana- lytic tools in the decoupling limit and we comment on some possible reasons behind the disagreement. Finally, we extend the analysis of the collective longitudinal modes beyond the hydrodynamic limit by displaying the dynamics of the higher quasi-normal modes at large frequencies and momenta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use holography to study sound modes of strongly-interacting conformal field theories with non-zero temperature, T, and U(1) chemical potential, μ. Specifically, we consider charged black brane solutions of Einstein gravity in (3+1)-dimensional Anti-de Sitter space coupled to a U(1) gauge field with Dirac-Born-Infeld action, representing a spacetime-filling brane. The brane action has two free parameters: the tension and the non-linearity parameter, which controls higher-order terms in the field strength. For all values of the tension, non-linearity parameter, and T /μ, and at sufficiently small momentum, we find sound modes with speed given by the conformal value and attenuation constant of hydrodynamic form. In particular we find sound at arbitrarily low T /μ, outside the usual hydrodynamic regime, but in the regime where a Fermi liquid exhibits Landau’s “zero” sound. In fact, the sound attenuation constant as a function of T /μ qualitatively resembles that of a Fermi liquid, including a maximum, which in a Fermi liquid signals the collisionless to hydrodynamic crossover. We also explore regimes of the tension and non-linearity parameter where two other proposed definitions of the crossover are viable, via pole collisions in Green’s functions or peak movement in the charge density spectral function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within a holographic framework we construct supersymmetric Q-lattice (‘Susy Q’) solutions that describe RG flows driven by supersymmetric and spatially modulated deformations of the dual CFTs. We focus on a specific D = 4 supergravity model which arises as a consistent KK truncation of D = 11 supergravity on the seven sphere that preserves SO(4) × SO(4) symmetry. The Susy Q solutions are dual to boomerang RG flows, flowing from ABJM theory in the UV, deformed by spatially modulated mass terms depending on one of the spatial directions, back to the ABJM vacuum in the far IR. For large enough deformations the boomerang flows approach the well known Poincaré invariant RG dielectric flow. The spatially averaged energy density vanishes for the Susy Q solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]