CFT States Research Articles

Bra-ket wormholes in gravitationally prepared states

We consider two dimensional CFT states that are produced by a gravitational path integral.As a first case, we consider a state produced by Euclidean AdS2 evolution followed by flat space evolution. We use the fine grained entropy formula to explore the nature of the state. We find that the naive hyperbolic space geometry leads to a paradox. This is solved if we include a geometry that connects the bra with the ket, a bra-ket wormhole. The semiclassical Lorentzian interpretation leads to CFT state entangled with an expanding and collapsing Friedmann cosmology.As a second case, we consider a state produced by Lorentzian dS2 evolution, again followed by flat space evolution. The most naive geometry also leads to a similar paradox. We explore several possible bra-ket wormholes. The most obvious one leads to a badly divergent temperature. The most promising one also leads to a divergent temperature but by making a projection onto low energy states we find that it has features that look similar to the previous Euclidean case. In particular, the maximum entropy of an interval in the future is set by the de Sitter entropy.

Geometry of entanglement

In the context of the surface-state correspondence we propose the geodesic curvature of a convex curve as a local measure of factorization of the dual CFT state. Its integral will be interpreted as computing the bipartite entanglement among degrees of freedom with support on the chosen domain. We will derive results through application of the Gauss-Bonnet theorem and show quantitative agreement with computations using the MERA tensor network and the formalism of entanglement density.

Information recovery from pure state geometries in 3D

It is a well-studied phenomenon in AdS3/CFT2 that pure states often appear ‘too thermal’ in the classical gravity limit, leading to a version of the information puzzle. One example is the case of a heavy scalar primary state, whose associated classical geometry is the BTZ black hole. Another example is provided by a heavy left-moving primary, which displays late time decay in chiral correlators.In this paper we study a special class of pure state geometries which do not display such information loss. They describe heavy CFT states created by a collection of chiral operators at various positions on the complex plane. In the bulk, these take the form of multi-centered solutions from the backreaction of a collection of spinning particles, which we construct for circular distributions of particles. We compute the two-point function of probe operators in these backgrounds and show that information is retrieved.We observe that the states for which our geometric picture is reliable are highly extended star-like objects in the bulk description. This may point to limitations of semiclassical microstate geometries for understanding the information puzzle and to the need for including quantum effects.

BTZ trailing strings

We compute holographically the energy loss of a moving quark in various states of the D1-D5 CFT. In the dual bulk geometries, the quark is the end of a trailing string, and the profile of this string determines the drag force exerted by the medium on the quark. We find no drag force when the CFT state has no momentum, and a nontrivial force for any value of the velocity (even at rest) when the string extends in the supersymmetric D1-D5-P black-hole geometry, or a horizonless microstate geometry thereof. As the length of the throat of the microstate geometry increases, the drag force approaches the thermal BTZ expression, confirming the ability of these microstate geometries to capture typical black-hole physics. We also find that when the D1-D5-P black hole is non-extremal, there is a special value of the velocity at which a moving quark feels no force. We compute this velocity holographically and we compare it to the velocity computed in the CFT.

Entanglement wedge cross sections require tripartite entanglement

We argue that holographic CFT states require a large amount of tripartite entanglement, in contrast to the conjecture that their entanglement is mostly bipartite. Our evidence is that this mostly-bipartite conjecture is in sharp conflict with two well- supported conjectures about the entanglement wedge cross section surface EW. If EW is related to either the CFT’s reflected entropy or its entanglement of purification, then those quantities can differ from the mutual information at Oleft(frac{1}{G_N}right). We prove that this implies holographic CFT states must have Oleft(frac{1}{G_N}right). amounts of tripartite entanglement. This proof involves a new Fannes-type inequality for the reflected entropy, which itself has many interesting applications.

Lifting of level-1 states in the D1D5 CFT

The D1D5 CFT has a large set of states that are supersymmetric at the ‘free’ orbifold point in moduli space. When we perturb away from this point, some of these states join into long multiplets and lift in energy, while others remain supersymmetric. The count of unlifted states can be bounded below by an index, but the index does not yield the pattern of lifting; i.e., which states join into a long multiplet and how much this multiplet lifts. In this paper we consider the simple case of the D1D5 CFT where the orbifold CFT is a sigma model with targets space (T4)2/S2 and consider states at energy level 1. There are 2688 states at this level. The lifted states form a triplet of long multiplets, and we compute their lift at second order in perturbation theory. Half the members of the long multiplet are in the untwisted sector and half are in the twisted sector. This and other similar studies should help in the understanding of fuzzball states that describe extremal holes, since CFT sectors with low twist describe shallow throats in the dual gravity solution while sectors with high twist describe deep throats.

Entanglement wedge cross section from CFT: dynamics of local operator quench

We derive dynamics of the entanglement wedge cross section from the reflected entropy for local operator quench states in the holographic CFT. By comparing between the reflected entropy and the mutual information in this dynamical setup, we argue that (1) the reflected entropy can diagnose a new perspective of the chaotic nature for given mixed states and (2) it can also characterize classical correlations in the subregion/subregion duality. Moreover, we point out that we must improve the bulk interpretation of a heavy state even in the case of well-studied entanglement entropy. Finally, we show that we can derive the same results from the odd entanglement entropy. The present paper is an extended version of our earlier report arXiv:1907.06646 and includes many new results: non-perturbative quantum correction to the reflected/odd entropy, detailed analysis in both CFT and bulk sides, many technical aspects of replica trick for reflected entropy which turn out to be important for general setup, and explicit forms of multi-point semi- classical conformal blocks under consideration.

CFT sewing as the dual of AdS cut-and-paste

The CPT map allows two states of a quantum field theory to be sewn together over CPT-conjugate partial Cauchy surfaces R1, R2 to make a state on a new spacetime. We study the holographic dual of this operation in the case where the original states are CPT-conjugate within R1, R2 to leading order in the bulk Newton constant G, and where the bulk duals are dominated by classical bulk geometries g1, g2. For states of fixed area on the R1, R2 HRT-surfaces, we argue that the bulk geometry g1#g2 dual to the newly sewn state is given by deleting the entanglement wedges of R1, R2 from g1, g2, gluing the remaining complementary entanglement wedges of {overline{R}}_1,{overline{R}}_2 together across the HRT surface, and solving the equations of motion to the past and future. The argument uses the bulk path integral and assumes it to be dominated by a certain natural saddle. For states where the HRT area is not fixed, the same bulk cut-and-paste is dual to a modified sewing that produces a generalization of the canonical purification state sqrt{rho } discussed recently by Dutta and Faulkner. Either form of the construction can be used to build CFT states dual to bulk geometries associated with multipartite reflected entropy.

Relative entropy for coherent states in chiral CFT

We consider the relative entropy between the vacuum state and a state obtained by applying an exponentiated stress tensor to the vacuum of a chiral conformal field theory on the lightray. The smearing function of the stress tensor can be viewed as a vector field on the real line generating a diffeomorphism. We show that the relative entropy is equal to $c$ times the so-called Schwarzian action of the diffeomorphism. As an application of this result, we obtain a formula for the relative entropy between the vacuum and a solitonic state.

A modular sewing kit for entanglement wedges

We relate the Riemann curvature of a holographic spacetime to an entangle- ment property of the dual CFT state: the Berry curvature of its modular Hamiltonians. The modular Berry connection encodes the relative bases of nearby CFT subregions while its bulk dual, restricted to the code subspace, relates the edge-mode frames of the cor- responding entanglement wedges. At leading order in 1/N and for sufficiently smooth HRRT surfaces, the modular Berry connection simply sews together the orthonormal co- ordinate systems covering neighborhoods of HRRT surfaces. This geometric perspective on entanglement is a promising new tool for connecting the dynamics of entanglement and gravitation.

Conformally invariant boundary conditions in the antiferromagnetic Potts model and the SL(2, \u211d)/U(1) sigma model

We initiate a study of the boundary version of the square-lattice Q-state Potts antiferromagnet, with Q ∈ [0, 4] real, motivated by the fact that the continuum limit of the corresponding bulk model is a non-compact CFT, closely related with the SL(2, ℝ)k/U(1) Euclidian black-hole coset model. While various types of conformal boundary conditions (discrete and continuous branes) have been formally identified for the the SL(2, ℝ)k/U(1) coset CFT, we are only able in this work to identify conformal boundary conditions (CBC) leading to a discrete boundary spectrum. The CBC we find are of two types. The first is free boundary Potts spins, for which we confirm an old conjecture for the generating functions of conformal levels, and show them to be related to characters in a non-linear deformation of the W∞ algebra. The second type of CBC — which corresponds to restricting the values of the Potts spins to a subset of size Q1, or its complement of size Q − Q1, at alternating sites along the boundary — is new, and turns out to be conformal in the antiferromagnetic case only. In the following, we refer to these new boundary conditions as “alt” boundary conditions. Using algebraic and numerical techniques, we show that the corresponding spectrum generating functions produce all the characters of discrete representations for the coset CFT. The normalizability bounds of the associated discrete states in the coset CFT are found to have a simple interpretation in terms of boundary phase transitions in the lattice model. In the two-boundary case, with two distinct alt conditions, we obtain similar results, at least in the case when the corresponding boundary condition changing operator also inserts a number of defect lines. For sqrt{Q} = 2 cos frac{pi }{k} , with k ≥ 3 integer, we show also how our boundary conditions can be reformulated in terms of a RSOS height model. The spectrum generating functions are then identified with string functions of the compact SU(2)k−2/U(1) parafermion theory (with symmetry Zk−2). The new alt conditions are needed to cover all the string functions. We provide an algebraic proof that the two-boundary alt conditions correctly produce the fusion rules of string functions. We expose in detail the special case of Q = 3 and its link with three-colourings of the square lattice and a corresponding boundary six-vertex model. Finally, we discuss the case of an odd number of sites (in the loop model) and the relation with wired boundary conditions (in the spin model). In this case the RSOS restriction produces the disorder operators of the parafermion theory.

Holographic entropy relations repackaged

We explore the structure of holographic entropy relations (associated with ‘information quantities’ given by a linear combination of entanglement entropies of spatial sub-partitions of a CFT state with geometric bulk dual). Such entropy relations can be recast in multiple ways, some of which have significant advantages. Motivated by the already-noted simplification of entropy relations when recast in terms of multipartite information, we explore additional simplifications when recast in a new basis, which we dub the K-basis, constructed from perfect tensor structures. For the fundamental information quantities such a recasting is surprisingly compact, in part due to the interesting fact that entropy vectors associated to perfect tensors are in fact extreme rays in the holographic entropy cone (as well as the full quantum entropy cone). More importantly, we prove that all holographic entropy inequalities have positive coefficients when expressed in the K-basis, underlying the key advantage over the entropy basis or the multipartite information basis.

Holographic CFT states for localized perturbations to AdS black holes

In this note, we describe a holographic CFT construction of states dual to scalar perturbations of the maximally extended three-dimensional AdS-Schwarzschild black hole. The states are constructed by adding sources for a scalar operator to the path integral that constructs the thermofield double state. For a scalar field of arbitrary mass, we provide the general map between sources and scalar field perturbations at linear order. With this, we investigate to what extent it is possible using this construction to produce perturbations localized to one side of the black hole horizon. Our results suggest that it is possible to produce arbitrarily localized perturbations (and thus, plausibly, general linear perturbations to the black hole initial data slice), but that the amplitude of the perturbation must be taken small as the perturbation becomes more localized in order that the sources do not diverge, as found for the pure AdS case considered in arXiv:1709.10101.

AdS3 holography at dimension two

Holography can provide a microscopic interpretation of a gravitational solution as corresponding to a particular CFT state: the asymptotic expansion in gravity encodes the expectation values of operators in the dual CFT state. Such a correspondence is particularly valuable in black hole physics. We study supersymmetric D1-D5-P black holes, for which recently constructed microstate solutions known as “superstrata” provide strong motivation to derive the explicit D1-D5 holographic dictionary for CFT operators of total dimension two. In this work we derive the explicit map between one-point functions of scalar chiral primaries of dimension (1, 1) and the asymptotic expansions of families of asymptotically AdS3 ×S3 × ℳ supergravity solutions, with ℳ either T4 or K3. We include all possible mixings between single-trace and multi-trace operators. We perform several tests of the holographic map, including new precision holographic tests of superstrata, that provide strong supporting evidence for the proposed dual CFT states.

Black hole microstate cosmology

In this note, we explore the possibility that certain high-energy holographic CFT states correspond to black hole microstates with a geometrical behind-the-horizon region, modelled by a portion of a second asymptotic region terminating at an end-of-the-world (ETW) brane. We study the time-dependent physics of this behind-the-horizon region, whose ETW boundary geometry takes the form of a closed FRW spacetime. We show that in many cases, this behind-the-horizon physics can be probed directly by looking at the time dependence of entanglement entropy for sufficiently large spatial CFT subsystems. We study in particular states defined via Euclidean evolution from conformal boundary states and give specific predictions for the behavior of the entanglement entropy in this case. We perform analogous calculations for the SYK model and find qualitative agreement with our expectations. We also calculate holographic complexity for the d = 2 ETW geometries, finding that complexity-action and complexity-volume proposals give the same linear growth at late times, but differ at early times.A fascinating possibility is that for certain states, we might have gravity localized to the ETW brane as in the Randall-Sundrum II scenario for cosmology. In this case, the effective description of physics beyond the horizon could be a big bang/big crunch cosmology of the same dimensionality as the CFT. In this case, the d-dimensional CFT describing the black hole microstate would give a precise, microscopic description of the d-dimensional cosmological physics.

Nonlocal multi-trace sources and bulk entanglement in holographic conformal field theories

We consider CFT states defined by adding nonlocal multi-trace sources to the Euclidean path integral defining the vacuum state. For holographic theories, we argue that these states correspond to states in the gravitational theory with a good semiclassical description but with a more general structure of bulk entanglement than states defined from single-trace sources. We show that at leading order in large N , the entanglement entropies for any such state are precisely the same as those of another state defined by appropriate single-trace effective sources; thus, if the leading order entanglement entropies are geometrical for the single-trace states of a CFT, they are geometrical for all the multi-trace states as well. Next, we consider the perturbative calculation of 1/N corrections to the CFT entanglement entropies, demonstrating that these show qualitatively different features, including non-analyticity in the sources and/or divergences in the naive perturbative expansion. These features are consistent with the expectation that the 1/N corrections include contributions from bulk entanglement on the gravity side. Finally, we investigate the dynamical constraints on the bulk geometry and the quantum state of the bulk fields which must be satisfied so that the entropies can be reproduced via the quantum-corrected Ryu-Takayanagi formula.

Gravity from micro-equilibration

We suggest a mechanism for the emergence of classical dynamical spacetime from an underlying quantum gravitational system. This is an example of a more general process, which we name micro-equilibration, and which can be thought of as local thermalization of entanglement. Applied in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence, we propose that this dynamical process underlies generic evolution towards CFT states whose gravitational dual describes smooth bulk geometries. Hence, contrary to common expectation, such “geometric” CFT states are in fact typical in this sense. Correspondingly, they can be characterized by a specific universal entanglement structure resulting from micro-equilibration of a generic quantum state.

Emergence of spacetime from the algebra of total modular Hamiltonians

We study the action of the CFT total modular Hamiltonian on the CFT representation of bulk fields with spin. In the vacuum of the CFT the total modular Hamiltonian acts as a bulk Lie derivative, reducing on the RT surface to a boost perpendicular to the RT surface. This enables us to reconstruct bulk fields with spin from the CFT. On fields with gauge redundancies the total modular Hamiltonian acts as a bulk Lie derivative together with a compensating bulk gauge (or diffeomorphism) transformation to restore the original gauge. We consider the Lie algebra generated by the total modular Hamiltonians of all spherical CFT subregions and define weakly-maximal Lie subalgebras as proper subalgebras containing a maximal set of total modular Hamiltonians. In a CFT state with a bulk dual, we show that the bulk spacetime parametrizes the space of these weakly-maximal Lie subalgebras. Each such weakly-maximal Lie subalgebra induces Lorentz transformations at a particular point in the bulk manifold. The bulk metric dual to a pure CFT state is invariant at each point under this transformation. This condition fixes the metric up to a conformal factor that can be computed from knowledge of the equation parametrizing extremal surfaces. This gives a holographic notion of the invariance of a pure CFT state under CFT modular flow.

Early scrambling and capped BTZ geometries

Geodesic probes in certain horizonless microstate geometries experience extreme tidal forces long before reaching the region where these geometries differ significantl from the extremal BTZ black hole. The purpose of this paper is to show that this behavior is a universal feature of all geometries that have a long BTZ throat that terminates in a cap, regardless of the details of this cap. Hence, incoming probes will scramble into the microstate structure before they encounter the region where the charges of the solution are sourced, and the reason for this premature scrambling is the amplification of tiny geometrical deviations by the relativistic speeds of the probes. To illustrate the phenomenon, we construct a new family of smooth horizonless superstratum microstate geometries, dual to D1-D5 CFT states whose momentum charge is carried by excitations on CFT strands of length k. We also show that, in the large-k limit, these new superstrata resemble a blackened supertube solution everywhere except in the near-supertube region. Thus they resolve the singularity caused by the naive back-reaction of modes with non-linear instabilities near evanescent ergosurfaces.

Holographic entanglement negativity for disjoint intervals in AdS_3/CFT_2

We advance a holographic construction for the entanglement negativity of bipartite mixed state configurations of two disjoint intervals in (1+1) dimensional conformal field theories (CFT_{1+1}) through the AdS_3/CFT_2 correspondence. Our construction constitutes the large central charge analysis of the entanglement negativity for mixed states under consideration and involves a specific algebraic sum of bulk space like geodesics anchored on appropriate intervals in the dual CFT_{1+1}. The construction is utilized to compute the holographic entanglement negativity for such mixed states in CFT_{1+1}s dual to bulk pure AdS_3 geometries and BTZ black holes respectively. Our analysis exactly reproduces the universal features of corresponding replica technique results in the large central charge limit which serves as a consistency check.