Violation of the quantum null-energy condition in a holographic wormhole and infrared effects

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a violation of the quantum null energy condition in a holographic wormhole setup, highlighting the importance of infrared effects and providing a novel counterexample in the context of AdS/CFT correspondence.

Contribution

It constructs a new AdS black hole solution with wormhole topology and shows that the QNEC can be violated near the wormhole throat, emphasizing IR effects.

Findings

QNEC is violated near the wormhole throat.

Constructed a novel 3+1D AdS black hole with wormhole topology.

IR regularization is crucial for analyzing entanglement entropy.

Abstract

We examine the quantum null energy condition (QNEC) for a $2+1$-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT) at strong coupling in the background of a wormhole spacetime by employing the AdS/CFT correspondence. First, we numerically construct a novel $3+1$-dimensional vacuum AdS black hole solution with non-trivial topology, which is dual to a wormhole geometry connecting two flat universes. Although the bulk null energy condition (NEC) is not violated, the NEC for the holographic stress-energy tensor is violated near the wormhole throat. Next, we investigate the entanglement entropy for a half-space anchored to the boundary wormhole throat. We propose a natural prescription for regularizing the IR divergent part of the entanglement entropy and show that the QNEC is violated at the throat. This is the first counterexample to the QNEC, indicating that IR effects are crucial.