Quantum null energy condition and its (non)saturation in 2d CFTs

Abstract

We consider the Quantum Null Energy Condition (QNEC) for holographic conformal field theories in two spacetime dimensions (CFT _2 <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:msub> <mml:mi/> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:msub> </mml:math> ). We show that QNEC saturates for all states dual to vacuum solutions of AdS _3 <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:msub> <mml:mi/> <mml:mn>3</mml:mn> </mml:msub> </mml:math> Einstein gravity, including systems that are far from thermal equilibrium. If the Ryu-Takayanagi surface encounters bulk matter QNEC does not need to be saturated, whereby we give both analytical and numerical examples. In particular, for CFT _2 <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:msub> <mml:mi/> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:msub> </mml:math> with a global quench dual to AdS _3 <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:msub> <mml:mi/> <mml:mn>3</mml:mn> </mml:msub> </mml:math> -Vaidya geometries we find a curious half-saturation of QNEC for large entangling regions. We also address order one corrections from quantum backreactions of a scalar field in AdS _3 <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:msub> <mml:mi/> <mml:mn>3</mml:mn> </mml:msub> </mml:math> dual to a primary operator of dimension h in a large central charge expansion and explicitly compute both, the backreacted Ryu–Takayanagi surface part and the bulk entanglement contribution to EE and QNEC. At leading order for small entangling regions the contribution from bulk EE exactly cancels the contribution from the back-reacted Ryu-Takayanagi surface, but at higher orders in the size of the region the contributions are almost equal while QNEC is not saturated. For a half-space entangling region we find that QNEC is gapped by h/4 <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>h</mml:mi> <mml:mi>/</mml:mi> <mml:mn>4</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> in the large h expansion.