The gravity dual of Rényi entropy.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27515122.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms12472 and PMC identifier 4990647.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
A remarkable yet mysterious property of black holes is that their entropy is proportional to the horizon area. This area law inspired the holographic principle, which was later realized concretely in gauge-gravity duality. In this context, entanglement entropy is given by the area of a minimal surface in a dual spacetime. However, discussions of area laws have been constrained to entanglement entropy, whereas a full understanding of a quantum state requires Rényi entropies. Here we show that all Rényi entropies satisfy a similar area law in holographic theories and are given by the areas of dual cosmic branes. This geometric prescription is a one-parameter generalization of the minimal surface prescription for entanglement entropy. Applying this we provide the first holographic calculation of mutual Rényi information between two disks of arbitrary dimension. Our results provide a framework for efficiently studying Rényi entropies and understanding entanglement structures in strongly coupled systems and quantum gravity.