3 research outputs found
Anisotropic Unruh temperatures
The relative entropy between very high-energy localized excitations and the vacuum, where both states are reduced to a spatial region, gives place to a precise definition of a local temperature produced by vacuum entanglement across the boundary. This generalizes the Unruh temperature of the Rindler wedge to arbitrary regions. The local temperatures can be read off from the short distance leading have a universal geometric expression that follows by solving a particular eikonal type equation in Euclidean space. This equation generalizes to any dimension the holomorphic property that holds in two dimensions. For regions of arbitrary shapes the local temperatures at a point are direction dependent. We compute their explicit expression for the geometry of a wall or strip.Facultad de Ciencias ExactasInstituto de FÃsica La Plat
Local temperatures and local terms in modular Hamiltonians
We show there are analogs to the Unruh temperature that can be defined for any quantum field theory and region of the space. These local temperatures are defined using relative entropy with localized excitations. We show that important restrictions arise from relative entropy inequalities and causal propagation between Cauchy surfaces. These suggest a large amount of universality for local temperatures, especially the ones affecting null directions. For regions with any number of intervals in two spacetime dimensions, the local temperatures might arise from a term in the modular Hamiltonian proportional to the stress tensor. We argue this term might be universal, with a coefficient that is the same for any theory, and check analytically and numerically that this is the case for free massive scalar and Dirac fields. In dimensions d≥3, the local terms in the modular Hamiltonian producing these local temperatures cannot be formed exclusively from the stress tensor. For a free scalar field, we classify the structure of the local terms.Instituto de FÃsica La Plat
No cosmological domain wall problem for weakly coupled fields
After inflation occurs, a weakly coupled scalar field will in general not be
in thermal equilibrium but have a distribution of values determined by the
inflationary Hubble parameter. If such a field subsequently undergoes discrete
symmetry breaking, then the different degenerate vacua may not be equally
populated so the domain walls which form will be `biased' and the wall network
will subsequently collapse. Thus the cosmological domain wall problem may be
solved for sufficiently weakly coupled fields in a post-inflationary universe.
We quantify the criteria for determining whether this does happen, using a
Higgs-like potential with a spontaneously broken symmetry.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures (Revtex), clarifying Comments added in
Introduction; to appear in Phys. Rev