Mapping local Hamiltonians of fermions to local Hamiltonians of spins

We show how to map local fermionic problems onto local spin problems on a lattice in any dimension. The main idea is to introduce auxiliary degrees of freedom, represented by Majorana fermions, which allow us to extend the Jordan-Wigner transformation to dimensions higher than one. We also discuss the implications of our results in the numerical investigation of fermionic systems.Comment: Added explicit mappin

Tall tales from de Sitter space II: Field theory dualities

We consider the evolution of massive scalar fields in (asymptotically) de Sitter spacetimes of arbitrary dimension. Through the proposed dS/CFT correspondence, our analysis points to the existence of new nonlocal dualities for the Euclidean conformal field theory. A massless conformally coupled scalar field provides an example where the analysis is easily explicitly extended to 'tall' background spacetimes.Comment: 31 pages, 2 figure

On Dirichlet-to-Neumann Maps, Nonlocal Interactions, and Some Applications to Fredholm Determinants

We consider Dirichlet-to-Neumann maps associated with (not necessarily self-adjoint) Schrodinger operators describing nonlocal interactions in $L^2(\Omega; d^n x)$, $n\geq 2$, where $\Omega$ is an open set with a compact, nonempty boundary satisfying certain regularity conditions. As an application we describe a reduction of a certain ratio of Fredholm perturbation determinants associated with operators in $L^2(\Omega; d^n x)$ to Fredholm perturbation determinants associated with operators in $L^2(\partial\Omega; d^{n-1}\sigma)$. This leads to an extension of a variant of a celebrated formula due to Jost and Pais, which reduces the Fredholm perturbation determinant associated with a Schr\"odinger operator on the half-line $(0,\infty)$, in the case of local interactions, to a Wronski determinant of appropriate distributional solutions of the underlying Schrodinger equation.Comment: 18 page

Entanglement, Holography and Causal Diamonds

We argue that the degrees of freedom in a d-dimensional CFT can be re-organized in an insightful way by studying observables on the moduli space of causal diamonds (or equivalently, the space of pairs of timelike separated points). This 2d-dimensional space naturally captures some of the fundamental nonlocality and causal structure inherent in the entanglement of CFT states. For any primary CFT operator, we construct an observable on this space, which is defined by smearing the associated one-point function over causal diamonds. Known examples of such quantities are the entanglement entropy of vacuum excitations and its higher spin generalizations. We show that in holographic CFTs, these observables are given by suitably defined integrals of dual bulk fields over the corresponding Ryu-Takayanagi minimal surfaces. Furthermore, we explain connections to the operator product expansion and the first law of entanglement entropy from this unifying point of view. We demonstrate that for small perturbations of the vacuum, our observables obey linear two-derivative equations of motion on the space of causal diamonds. In two dimensions, the latter is given by a product of two copies of a two-dimensional de Sitter space. For a class of universal states, we show that the entanglement entropy and its spin-three generalization obey nonlinear equations of motion with local interactions on this moduli space, which can be identified with Liouville and Toda equations, respectively. This suggests the possibility of extending the definition of our new observables beyond the linear level more generally and in such a way that they give rise to new dynamically interacting theories on the moduli space of causal diamonds. Various challenges one has to face in order to implement this idea are discussed.Comment: 84 pages, 12 figures; v2: expanded discussion on constraints in section 7, matches published versio

A non-local vector calculus,non-local volume-constrained problems,and non-local balance laws

A vector calculus for nonlocal operators is developed, including the definition of nonlocal divergence, gradient, and curl operators and the derivation of the corresponding adjoints operators. Nonlocal analogs of several theorems and identities of the vector calculus for differential operators are also presented. Relationships between the nonlocal operators and their differential counterparts are established, first in a distributional sense and then in a weak sense by considering weighted integrals of the nonlocal adjoint operators. The nonlocal calculus gives rise to volume-constrained problems that are analogous to elliptic boundary-value problems for differential operators; this is demonstrated via some examples. Another application is posing abstract nonlocal balance laws and deriving the corresponding nonlocal field equations