Entanglement in holographic dark energy models

We study a process of equilibration of holographic dark energy (HDE) with the cosmic horizon around the dark-energy dominated epoch. This process is characterized by a huge amount of information conveyed across the horizon, filling thereby a large gap in entropy between the system on the brink of experiencing a sudden collapse to a black hole and the black hole itself. At the same time, even in the absence of interaction between dark matter and dark energy, such a process marks a strong jump in the entanglement entropy, measuring the quantum-mechanical correlations between the horizon and its interior. Although the effective quantum field theory (QFT) with a peculiar relationship between the UV and IR cutoffs, a framework underlying all HDE models, may formally account for such a huge shift in the number of distinct quantum states, we show that the scope of such a framework becomes tremendously restricted, devoiding it virtually any application in other cosmological epochs or particle-physics phenomena. The problem of negative entropies for the non-phantom stuff is also discussed.Comment: 10 pages, version to appear in PL

Effective field theory, large number of particle species, and holography

An effective quantum field theory (QFT) with a manifest UV/IR connection, so as to be valid for arbitrarily large volumes, can successfully be applied to the cosmological dark energy problem as well as the cosmological constant (CC) problem. Motivated by recent approaches to the hierarchy problem, we develop such a framework with a large number of particle species. When applying to systems on the brink of experiencing a sudden collapse to a black hole, we find that the entropy, unlike the total energy, now becomes an increasing function of the number of field species. An internal consistency of the theory is then used to infer the upper bound on the number of particle species, showing consistency with the holographic Bekenstein-Hawking bound. This may thus serve to fill in a large gap in entropy of any non-black hole configuration of matter and the black holes. In addition, when the bound is saturated the entanglement entropy matches the black hole entropy, thus solving the multiplicity of species problem. In a cosmological setting, the maximum allowable number of species becomes a function of cosmological time, reaching its minimal value in a low-entropy post-reheating epoch.Comment: 8 pages, minor corrections, a reference added, to appear in PL

Constructing biquandles

We define biquandle structures on a given quandle, and show that any biquandle is given by some biquandle structure on its underlying quandle. By determining when two biquandle structures yield isomorphic biquandles, we obtain a relationship between the automorphism group of a biquandle and the automorphism group of its underlying quandle. As an application, we determine the automorphism groups of Alexander and dihedral biquandles. We also discuss product biquandles and describe their automorphism groups.Comment: 17 page

The topological biquandle of a link

To every oriented link $L$, we associate a topologically defined biquandle $\widehat{\mathcal{B}}_{L}$, which we call the topological biquandle of $L$. The construction of $\widehat{\mathcal{B}}_{L}$ is similar to the topological description of the fundamental quandle given by Matveev. We find a presentation of the topological biquandle and explain how it is related to the fundamental biquandle of the link.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figure