Information loss in effective field theory: Entanglement and thermal entropies

Abstract

Integrating out high energy degrees of freedom to yield a low energy effective field theory leads to a loss of information with a concomitant increase in entropy. We obtain the effective field theory of a light scalar field interacting with heavy fields after tracing out the heavy degrees of freedom from the time evolved density matrix. The initial density matrix describes the light field in its ground state and the heavy fields in equilibrium at a common temperature $T$. For $T=0$, we obtain the reduced density matrix in a perturbative expansion, it reveals an emergent mixed state as a consequence of the entanglement between light and heavy fields. We obtain the effective action that determines the time evolution of the \emph{reduced} density matrix for the light field in a non-perturbative Dyson resummation of one-loop correlations of the heavy fields. The Von-Neumann \emph{entanglement entropy} associated with the reduced density matrix is obtained for the non-resonant and resonant cases in the asymptotic long time limit. In the non-resonant case the reduced density matrix displays an \emph{incipient} thermalization albeit with a wave-vector, time and coupling dependent \emph{effective temperature} as a consequence of memory of initial conditions. The entanglement entropy is time independent and is the \emph{thermal entropy} for this effective, non-equilibrium temperature. In the resonant case the light field fully \emph{thermalizes} with the heavy fields, the reduced density matrix looses memory of the initial conditions and the entanglement entropy becomes the \emph{thermal entropy} of the light field. We discuss the relation between the entanglement entropy ultraviolet divergences and renormalization.