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In-in formalism for the entropy of quantum fields in curved spacetimes

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arxiv 2406.17856 v2 pith:3VY6MTSJ submitted 2024-06-25 hep-th astro-ph.COgr-qc

classification hep-thastro-ph.COgr-qc
keywords quantumfieldformalismeffectiveentropyenvironmentexpansionfields
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
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We show how to compute the purity and entanglement entropy for quantum fields in a systematic perturbative expansion. To that end, we generalize the in-in formalism to non-unitary dynamics (i.e. accounting for the presence of an environment) and to the calculation of quantum information measures, which are not observables in the usual sense. This allows us to reduce the problem to one involving standard correlation functions, and to organize their computation in a diagrammatic expansion for which we construct the corresponding Feynman rules. As an illustration, we apply the formalism to a cosmological setting inspired by the effective field theory of inflation. We find that at late times, non-linear loop corrections share the same time behavior as the linear contribution, and only yield a slight redressing of the purity. In particular, when the environment is heavy compared to the Hubble scale, the phenomenon of recoherence previously encountered is robust to the class of non-linear extensions considered. Bridging the gap between perturbative quantum field theory and open quantum systems paves the way to a better understanding of renormalization and resummation in open effective field theories. It also enables a more systematic exploration of quantum information properties in field theoretic settings.

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Cited by 6 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Stochastic inflation from a non-equilibrium renormalization group

    hep-th 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 7.0 of 10

    Stochastic inflation is the leading infrared limit of a coarse-grained Schwinger–Keldysh effective theory, and the same Fokker–Planck dynamics follows from a Polchinski-type renormalization-group flow for the reduced ...

  2. Quantitative classicality in cosmological interactions during inflation

    gr-qc 2024-12 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    For standard slow-roll interactions, the quantum off-shell contribution to the inflationary bispectrum becomes subdominant before horizon crossing, so classical evolution with quantum initial conditions is often sufficient.

  3. Effective Field Theory and In-In Correlators

    hep-th 2024-12 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    Matching in-in correlators between a full theory and its effective theory requires extra boundary terms in flat space, but those terms fade away in de Sitter space.

  4. Inflationary Decoherence from the Gravitational Floor

    gr-qc 2025-09 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Gravitational self-interactions alone decohere super-Hubble inflationary fluctuations with purity loss growing as (aH/k)^5, faster than the a^3 growth of earlier calculations.

  5. An Open Effective Field Theory for light in a medium

    hep-th 2024-12 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A dissipative open EFT for photons in a medium is constructed, featuring a deformed advanced gauge symmetry and a noise constraint vμ(jμ+ξμ)=0.

  6. Does decoherence violate decoupling?

    hep-th 2024-11 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Tracing out a heavy field can appear to decohere a light field, but the apparent decoherence is an artifact of the chosen bipartition; the energy-based EFT projection preserves purity.

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