Quantum information probes of charge fractionalization in large-$N$ gauge theories

Abstract

We study in detail various information theoretic quantities with the intent of distinguishing between different charged sectors in fractionalized states of large-$N$ gauge theories. For concreteness, we focus on a simple holographic $(2+1)$-dimensional strongly coupled electron fluid whose charged states organize themselves into fractionalized and coherent patterns at sufficiently low temperatures. However, we expect that our results are quite generic and applicable to a wide range of systems, including non-holographic. The probes we consider include the entanglement entropy, mutual information, entanglement of purification and the butterfly velocity. The latter turns out to be particularly useful, given the universal connection between momentum and charge diffusion in the vicinity of a black hole horizon. The RT surfaces used to compute the above quantities, though, are largely insensitive to the electric flux in the bulk. To address this deficiency, we propose a generalized entanglement functional that is motivated through the Iyer-Wald formalism, applied to a gravity theory coupled to a $U(1)$ gauge field. We argue that this functional gives rise to a coarse grained measure of entanglement in the boundary theory which is obtained by tracing over (part) of the fractionalized and cohesive charge degrees of freedom. Based on the above, we construct a candidate for an entropic $c$-function that accounts for the existence of bulk charges. We explore some of its general properties and their significance, and discuss how it can be used to efficiently account for charged degrees of freedom across different energy scales.