Area laws in quantum systems

Autor(en)

Michael M. Wolf, Frank Verstraete, Matthew B. Hastings, J. Ignacio Cirac

Abstrakt

The holographic principle states that on a fundamental level the information content of a region should depend on its surface area rather than on its volume. In this Letter we show that this phenomenon not only emerges in the search for new Planck-scale laws but also in lattice models of classical and quantum physics: the information contained in part of a system in thermal equilibrium obeys an area law. While the maximal information per unit area depends classically only on the number of degrees of freedom, it may diverge as the inverse temperature in quantum systems. It is shown that an area law is generally implied by a finite correlation length when measured in terms of the mutual information.

Organisation(en)

Quantenoptik, Quantennanophysik und Quanteninformation

Externe Organisation(en)

Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Journal

Physical Review Letters

Band

100

Anzahl der Seiten

4

ISSN

0031-9007

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.070502

Publikationsdatum

02-2008

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

103025 Quantenmechanik

Schlagwörter

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/b44a762f-9cef-4018-a95f-a3a119270530