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Hubeny, Veronika E.

Publications and source records attributed to Hubeny, Veronika E..

Gap between holographic and quantum mechanical extreme rays of the subadditivity cone

We show via explicit construction that for six or more parties, there exist extreme rays of the subadditivity cone that can be realized by quantum states, but not by holographic states. This is a counterexample to a conjecture first formulated in Hernández-Cuenca et al. [The holographic entropy cone from marginal independence, J. High Energy Phys. 09 (2022) 190.], and implies the existence of deep holographic constraints that restrict the allowed patterns of independence among various subsystems beyond the universal quantum mechanical restrictions.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

On the relation between the subadditivity cone and the quantum entropy cone

Given a multipartite quantum system, what are the possible ways to impose mutual independence among some subsystems, and the presence of correlations among others, such that there exists a quantum state which satisfies these demands? This question and the related notion of a pattern of marginal independence (PMI) were introduced in [1], and then argued in [2] to be central in the derivation of the holographic entropy cone. Here we continue the general information theoretic analysis of the PMIs allowed by strong subadditivity (SSA) initiated in [1]. We show how the computation of these PMIs simplifies when SSA is replaced by a weaker constraint, dubbed Klein’s condition (KC), which follows from the necessary condition for the saturation of subadditivity (SA). Formulating KC in the language of partially ordered sets, we show that the set of PMIs compatible with KC forms a lattice, and we investigate several of its structural properties. One of our main results is the identification of a specific lower dimensional face of the SA cone that contains on its boundary all the extreme rays (beyond Bell pairs) that can possibly be realized by quantum states. We verify that for four or more parties, KC is strictly weaker than SSA, but nonetheless the PMIs compatible with SSA can easily be derived from the KC-compatible ones. For the special case of 1-dimensional PMIs, we conjecture that KC and SSA are in fact equivalent. To make the presentation self-contained, we review the key ingredients from lattice theory as needed.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Covariant bit threads

We derive several new reformulations of the Hubeny-Rangamani-Takayanagi covariant holographic entanglement entropy formula. These include: (1) a minimax formula, which involves finding a maximal-area achronal surface on a timelike hypersurface homologous to D(A) (the boundary causal domain of the region A whose entropy we are calculating) and minimizing over the hypersurface; (2) a max V-flow formula, in which we maximize the flux through D(A) of a divergenceless bulk 1-form V subject to an upper bound on its norm that is non-local in time; and (3) a min U-flow formula, in which we minimize the flux over a bulk Cauchy slice of a divergenceless timelike 1-form U subject to a lower bound on its norm that is non-local in space. The two flow formulas define convex programs and are related to each other by Lagrange duality. For each program, the optimal configurations dynamically find the HRT surface and the entanglement wedges of A and its complement. The V-flow formula is the covariant version of the Freedman-Headrick bit thread reformulation of the Ryu-Takayanagi formula. We also introduce a measure-theoretic concept of a “thread distribution”, and explain how Riemannian flows, V-flows, and U-flows can be expressed in terms of thread distributions.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗