Linear growth of entanglement entropy in holographic thermalization captured by horizon interiors and mutual information

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how entanglement entropy grows linearly during holographic thermalization, linking it to horizon interiors and mutual information, and demonstrates the universality of these behaviors across various theories.

Contribution

It analytically and numerically shows the universal linear growth of entanglement entropy in holographic models and relates it to horizon interiors and mutual information.

Findings

Linear growth of entanglement entropy is related to horizon interior regions.

The growth rate approaches a constant for large entangling regions.

Results are universal across multiple theories including Gauss-Bonnet gravity.

Abstract

We study the holographic entanglement entropy in a homogeneous falling shell background, which is dual to the strongly coupled field theory following a global quench. For d=2 conformal field theories, it is known that the entropy has a linear growth regime if the scale of the entangling region is large. In addition, the growth rate approaches a constant when the scale increases. We demonstrate analytically that this behavior is directly related to the part of minimal area surface probing the interior of apparent horizons in the bulk, as well as the mutual information between two disjoint rectangular subsystems in the boundary. Furthermore, we show numerically that all the results are universal for the d=3 conformal field theory, the non-relativistic scale-invariant theory and the dual theory of Gauss-Bonnet gravity.