Published May 2020 | Version Submitted + Published
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Entanglement and the Double Copy

Abstract

We construct entangled states of gluons that scatter exactly as if they were gravitons. Operationally, these objects implement the double copy at the level of the wave function. Our analysis begins with a general ansatz for a wave function characterizing gluons in two copies of SU(N) gauge theory. Given relatively minimal assumptions following from permutation invariance and dimensional analysis, the three- and four-particle wave functions generate scattering amplitudes that automatically coincide exactly with gravity, modulo normalization. For five-particle scattering the match is not automatic but imposing certain known selection rules on the amplitude is sufficient to uniquely reproduce gravity. The resulting amplitudes exhibit a color-dressed and permutation-invariant form of the usual double copy relations. We compute the entanglement entropy between the two gauge theory copies and learn that these states are maximally-entangled at large N . Moreover, this approach extends immediately to effective field theories, where Born-Infeld photons and Galileons can be similarly recast as entangled gluons and pions.

Additional Information

© 2020 The Authors. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits any use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. Article funded by SCOAP3. Received: March 10, 2020; Revised: April 14, 2020; Accepted: April 15, 2020; Published: May 22, 2020. We thank Jake Bourjaily, JJ Carrasco, Matt Headrick, and Junyu Liu for useful discussions and comments. C.C. is supported by the DOE under grant no. DE-SC0011632 and by the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics. G.N.R. is supported by the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
101738
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20200306-105910131

Related works

Funding

Department of Energy (DOE)
DE-SC0011632
Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, Caltech
Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science
SCOAP3

Dates

Created
2020-03-06
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-16
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics
Other Numbering System Name
CALT-TH
Other Numbering System Identifier
2020-003