The refined quantum extremal surface prescription from the asymptotic equipartition property

Abstract

Information-theoretic ideas have provided numerous insights in the progress of fundamental physics, especially in our pursuit of quantum gravity. In particular, the holographic entanglement entropy is a very useful tool in studying AdS/CFT, and its efficacy is manifested in the recent black hole page curve calculation. On the other hand, the one-shot information-theoretic entropies, such as the smooth min/max-entropies, are less discussed in AdS/CFT. They are however more fundamental entropy measures from the quantum information perspective and should also play pivotal roles in holography. We combine the technical methods from both quantum information and quantum gravity to put this idea on firm grounds. In particular, we study the quantum extremal surface (QES) prescription that was recently revised to highlight the significance of one-shot entropies in characterizing the QES phase transition. Motivated by the asymptotic equipartition property (AEP), we derive the refined quantum extremal surface prescription for fixed-area states via a novel AEP replica trick, demonstrating the synergy between quantum information and quantum gravity. We further prove that, when restricted to pure bulk marginal states, such corrections do not occur for the higher Rényi entropies of a boundary subregion in fixed-area states, meaning they always have sharp QES transitions. Our path integral derivation suggests that the refinement applies beyond AdS/CFT, and we confirm it in a black hole toy model by showing that the Page curve, for a black hole in a superposition of two radiation stages, receives a large correction that is consistent with the refined QES prescription.

Quantum minimal surfaces from quantum error correction

“…In this picture, rather 1 Let us emphasize the proviso: this is only true for appropriate holographic states. As shown in [11] (see also [15]), there are some semiclassical holographic states -i.e. simple states of bulk quantum matter on fixed semiclassical geometric backgrounds -for which (1) does not apply for any bulk region b, even as a leading order semiclassical approximation.…”

“…[1] for others. 15 Theorem 3.1 (Formulations of exact state-independent QEC). Let V : H code → H B ⊗ H B be an isometry between finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces.…”

“…16 We will return to it when we talk about state-specific reconstruction. 15 To see the equivalence of the conditions in Theorem 3.1 below and those in Theorem 3.1 of [1], note that Condition 3 below is manifestly equivalent to the Hermitian and anti-Hermitian parts of Condition 2 of Theorem 3.1 of [1]. 16 See e.g.…”

One-shot holography

“…We will assume throughout that the max-QFC and (von Neumann) QFC both hold. 17 Let us motivate these consistency conditions. The first is that in certain cases, the max-EW and min-EW should coincide, and in such cases should equal the QES region.…”

“…See also[17][18][19] for additional discussion 3. One also has access to unlimited classical bits (or more generally zero-bits) containing information about A 4.…”