Living on the edge: a non-perturbative resolution to the negativity of bulk entropies

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Antonini, Stefano, Iliesiu, Luca V., Rath, Pratik, Tran, Patrick
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917451692769280
author Antonini, Stefano
Iliesiu, Luca V.
Rath, Pratik
Tran, Patrick
author_facet Antonini, Stefano
Iliesiu, Luca V.
Rath, Pratik
Tran, Patrick
contents Lin, Maldacena, Rozenberg, and Shan (LMRS) presented a new information paradox in black hole physics by noticing that the entanglement and Rényi entropies in a two-sided black hole can become negative when the geometry contains a very large number of matter excitations behind the black hole horizon. While originally this puzzle was presented in the context of BPS two-sided black holes in two-dimensional supergravity, the negativity in fact persists for more general two-sided black holes in the presence of a large number of matter excitations. Since the entanglement and Rényi entropies in ordinary quantum systems cannot be negative, resolving this puzzle is a necessary step towards understanding the quantum mechanical description of black holes. In this paper, we explain how to address the entanglement negativity puzzle, both in the original setting discussed by LMRS and in more general non-supersymmetric settings, by summing over all non-perturbative contributions to the gravitational path integral. We then interpret this result from the point of view of a dual matrix integral, which we use to extend our analysis beyond the regime of validity of the genus re-summation performed in the gravitational path integral. In this regime, positivity is rescued by new saddles of the matrix integral, a one-eigenvalue instanton and a two-eigenvalue instanton. Finally, we formulate a similar puzzle and its resolution using random tensor network techniques.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_15295
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Living on the edge: a non-perturbative resolution to the negativity of bulk entropies
Antonini, Stefano
Iliesiu, Luca V.
Rath, Pratik
Tran, Patrick
High Energy Physics - Theory
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Quantum Physics
Lin, Maldacena, Rozenberg, and Shan (LMRS) presented a new information paradox in black hole physics by noticing that the entanglement and Rényi entropies in a two-sided black hole can become negative when the geometry contains a very large number of matter excitations behind the black hole horizon. While originally this puzzle was presented in the context of BPS two-sided black holes in two-dimensional supergravity, the negativity in fact persists for more general two-sided black holes in the presence of a large number of matter excitations. Since the entanglement and Rényi entropies in ordinary quantum systems cannot be negative, resolving this puzzle is a necessary step towards understanding the quantum mechanical description of black holes. In this paper, we explain how to address the entanglement negativity puzzle, both in the original setting discussed by LMRS and in more general non-supersymmetric settings, by summing over all non-perturbative contributions to the gravitational path integral. We then interpret this result from the point of view of a dual matrix integral, which we use to extend our analysis beyond the regime of validity of the genus re-summation performed in the gravitational path integral. In this regime, positivity is rescued by new saddles of the matrix integral, a one-eigenvalue instanton and a two-eigenvalue instanton. Finally, we formulate a similar puzzle and its resolution using random tensor network techniques.
title Living on the edge: a non-perturbative resolution to the negativity of bulk entropies
topic High Energy Physics - Theory
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15295