Probing holographic conformal field theories

TL;DR

This paper develops a boundary-first approach to embed quantum information protocols into holographic CFTs, using Unruh--DeWitt detectors to analyze quantum resources like mana, revealing differences between scalar quantizations in AdS/CFT.

Contribution

It introduces a novel operational framework coupling detectors to holographic CFTs and demonstrates how quantum resource measures can distinguish different scalar quantizations in AdS/CFT.

Findings

Detector's reduced density operator computed perturbatively.

Harvested mana distinguishes scalar quantizations.

Larger mana in standard quantization.

Abstract

We introduce an operational, boundary-first framework that embeds relativistic quantum-information protocols into anti-de Sitter/Conformal Field Theory (AdS/CFT) by coupling an Unruh--DeWitt detector directly to a local scalar primary operator of a holographic CFT. Using the universal CFT Wightman function, we compute the detector's reduced density operator perturbatively, retaining both excitation probabilities and coherences. As a concrete resource-theoretic application, we implement magic resource (mana) harvesting with a qutrit probe. For a CFT dual to global AdS, we show that the harvested mana sharply distinguishes the two admissible scalar quantizations in the Breitenlohner--Freedman window, with the standard quantization yielding systematically larger mana than the alternate one. Our results provide a viable way of testing holography principle through quantum information resource.