Momentum-space Entanglement and Renormalization in Quantum Field Theory

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Penn collection
Department of Physics Papers
Degree type
Discipline
Subject
Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Physics
Funder
Grant number
License
Copyright date
Distributor
Related resources
Author
McDermott, Michael B
Van Raamsdonk, Mark
Contributor
Abstract

The degrees of freedom of any interacting quantum field theory are entangled in momentum space. Thus, in the vacuum state, the infrared degrees of freedom are described by a density matrix with an entanglement entropy. We derive a relation between this density matrix and the Wilsonian effective action obtained by integrating out degrees of freedom with spatial momentum above some scale. We argue that the entanglement entropy of and mutual information between subsets of field theoretic degrees of freedom at different momentum scales are natural observables in quantum field theory and demonstrate how to compute these in perturbation theory. The results may be understood heuristically based on the scale dependence of the coupling strength and number of degrees of freedom. We measure the rate at which entanglement between degrees of freedom declines as their scales separate and suggest that this decay is related to the property of decoupling in quantum field theory.

Advisor
Date Range for Data Collection (Start Date)
Date Range for Data Collection (End Date)
Digital Object Identifier
Series name and number
Publication date
2012-08-06
Journal title
Volume number
Issue number
Publisher
Publisher DOI
Journal Issue
Comments
Balasubramanian, V., McDermott, M. B., & Van Raamsdonk, M. (2012). Momentum-space Entanglement and Renormalization in Quantum Field Theory. Physical Review D, 86(4), 045014. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.86.045014 © 2012 American Physical Society
Recommended citation
Collection