Journal of High Energy Physics (Jul 2024)

Page curves and replica wormholes from random dynamics

  • Jan de Boer,
  • Jildou Hollander,
  • Andrew Rolph

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP07(2024)023
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2024, no. 7
pp. 1 – 41

Abstract

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Abstract We show how to capture both the non-unitary Page curve and replica wormhole-like contributions that restore unitarity in a toy quantum system with random dynamics. The motivation is to find the simplest dynamical model that captures this aspect of gravitational physics. In our model, we evolve with an ensemble of Hamiltonians with GUE statistics within microcanonical windows. The entropy of the averaged state gives the non-unitary curve, the averaged entropy gives the unitary curve, and the difference comes from matrix index contractions in the Haar averaging that connect the density matrices in a replica wormhole-like manner.

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