Theory HEP Seminar

Minimal Areas from Entangled Matrices

Alexander Frenkel

Stanford

The Ryu-Takayanagi formula (and its many generalizations) is built upon the observation that an entanglement entropy on the boundary of AdS/CFT is computed by a minimal area in the bulk. Known notions of RT surfaces that directly match a bulk area to a boundary sub-algebra rely on some spatial partition of the boundary. In this talk we will focus on a simple matrix quantum mechanics (MQM) model, in which the boundary has no spatial geometry to partition. All sub-algebras are sub-algebras of the matrix degrees of freedom. Despite this, we find a notion of sub-algebra that is computed by a minimal area in the emergent geometry, suggesting that the RT prescription may be extended to MQM systems and below the AdS length-scale.