25–28 Aug 2025
Albano Building 2
Europe/Stockholm timezone

Minimal areas from entangled matrices

26 Aug 2025, 16:15
25m
Auditorium 5 (Albano Building 2)

Auditorium 5

Albano Building 2

Speaker

Jackson Fliss (University of Cambridge)

Description

The geometrization of quantum information lies at the core of holography and of quantum gravity more broadly. In this talk I will illustrate how the entanglement entropy of certain subsystems in matrix quantum mechanics can give rise to a minimization and counting problem exhibiting many similarities to the Ryu-Takayanagi formula. In particular, in states where a non-commutative geometry emerges from semiclassical matrices, the subsystem determines a reduced state which is the sum of density matrices corresponding to distinct spatial subregions, the areas of which count the dimension of maximally entangled edge modes. I will further show how this sum can be dominated by a subregion of minimal boundary area. Central to this result is a notion of coarse-graining that controls the proliferation of highly curved and disconnected non-geometric subregions in the sum.

Presentation materials