S. Shankaranarayanan

Power-law corrections to entanglement entropy of horizons

We reexamine the idea that the origin of black-hole entropy may lie in the entanglement of quantum fields between the inside and outside of the horizon. Motivated by the observation that certain modes of gravitational fluctuations in a black-hole background behave as scalar fields, we compute the entanglement entropy of such a field, by tracing over its degrees of freedom inside a sphere. We show that while this entropy is proportional to the area of the sphere when the field is in its ground state, a correction term proportional to a fractional power of area results when the field is in a superposition of ground and excited states. The area law is thus recovered for large areas. Further, we identify the location of the degrees of freedom that give rise to the above entropy.

How robust is the entanglement entropy: Area relation?

We revisit the problem of finding the entanglement entropy of a scalar field on a lattice by tracing over its degrees of freedom inside a sphere. It is known that this entropy satisfies the area law--entropy proportional to the area of the sphere--when the field is assumed to be in its ground state. We show that the area law continues to hold when the scalar field degrees of freedom are in generic coherent states and a class of squeezed states. However, when excited states are considered, the entropy scales as a lower power of the area. This suggests that, for large horizons, the ground state entropy dominates, whereas entropy due to excited states gives power-law corrections. We discuss possible implications of this result to black hole entropy.

High frequency quasi-normal modes for black-holes with generic singularities

Sherpa Romeo green journal. “This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication/published in Classical and Quantum Gravity. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it.”

High frequency quasi-normal modes for black holes with generic singularities: II. Asymptotically non-flat spacetimes

Sherpa Romeo green journal. “This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication/published in Classical and Quantum Gravity. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it.”

Fluctuations in horizon-fluid lead to negative bulk viscosity

Einstein equations projected on to a black hole horizon gives rise to Navier-Stokes equations. Horizon-fluids typically possess unusual features like negative bulk viscosity and it is not clear whether a statistical mechanical description exists for such fluids. In this work, we provide an explicit derivation of the Bulk viscosity of the horizon-fluid based on the theory of fluctuations a la Kubo. The main advantage of our approach is that our analysis remains for the most part independent of the details of the underlying microscopic theory and hence the conclusions reached here are model independent. We show that the coefficient of bulk viscosity for the horizon-fluid matches exactly with the value found from the equations of motion for the horizon-fluid.

Entanglement entropy in all dimensions

A bstractIt has long been conjectured that the entropy of quantum fields across boundaries scales as the boundary area. This conjecture has not been easy to test in spacetime dimensions greater than four because of divergences in the von Neumann entropy. Here we show that the Rényi entropy provides a convergent alternative, yielding a quantitative measure of entanglement between quantum field theoretic degrees of freedom inside and outside hypersurfaces. For the first time, we show that the entanglement entropy in higher dimensions is proportional to the higher dimensional area. We also show that the Rényi entropy diverges at specific values of the Rényi parameter q in each dimension, but this divergence can be tamed by introducing a mass to the quantum field.

Entanglement and corrections to Bekenstein-Hawking entropy

In this talk, we focus on the corrections to Bekenstein-Hawking entropy by associating it with the entanglement between degrees of freedom inside and outside the horizon. Using numerical techniques, we show that the corrections proportional to fractional power of area result when the field is in a superposition of ground and excited states. We explain this result by identifying that the degrees of freedom contributing to such corrections are different from those contributing to Bekenstein-Hawking entropy.

Where are the degrees of freedom responsible for black hole entropy

Considering the entanglement between quantum field degrees of freedom inside and outside the horizon as a plausible source of black-hole entropy, we address the question: where are the degrees of freedom that give rise to this entropy located? When the field is in ground state, the black-hole area law is obeyed and the degrees of freedom near the horizon contribute most to the entropy. However, for excited state, or a superposition of ground state and excited state, power-law corrections to the area law are obtained, and more significant contributions from the degrees of freedom far from the horizon are shown.

Entanglement as a source of black hole entropy

We review aspects of black hole thermodynamics, and show how entanglement of a quantum field between the inside and outside of a horizon can account for the area-proportionality of black hole entropy, provided the field is in its ground state. We show that the result continues to hold for Coherent States and Squeezed States, while for Excited States, the entropy scales as a power of area less than unity. We also identify location of the degrees of freedom which give rise to the above entropy.

PLANCK SCALE EFFECTS AND THE SUPPRESSION OF POWER ON THE LARGE SCALES IN THE PRIMORDIAL SPECTRUM

The enormous red-shifting of the modes during the inflationary epoch suggests that physics at the very high energy scales may modify the primordial perturbation spectrum. Therefore, the measurements of the anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) could provide us with clues to understanding physics beyond the Planck scale. In this proceeding, we study the Planck scale effects on the primordial spectrum in the power-law inflation using a model which preserves local Lorentz invariance. While our model reproduces the standard spectrum on small scales, it naturally predicts a suppression of power on the large scales -- a feature that seems to be necessary to explain deficit of power in the lower multipoles of the CMB.