Inequalities and Positivity in Modular Flowed Entanglement Entropy

Abstract

The modular Hamiltonian plays an important role in quantum information theory, quantum field theory, and the AdS/CFT correspondence. In this paper, we study a specific dynamical setup: starting from the tensor product of the reduced density matrices of a reference state, we evolve this product state under the modular flow generated by the reference state itself. We then investigate the resulting change in the entanglement entropy of a given region, which we call the modular entanglement shift (MES). Unlike evolution under a fixed quantum channel, this modular evolution obeys no general principle requiring the MES to have a definite sign. For a bipartition into subsystems A and B, we establish an exact entropy balance: the sum of the MESs for A and B equals the mutual information generated along the orbit. Consequently, their sum is nonnegative, even though either individual shift may be negative. For two disjoint intervals in the vacuum of a two-dimensional conformal field theory, however, we prove that a global conformal involution exchanging the intervals forces the two MESs to be equal. It follows that each MES is nonnegative along the modular flow. We establish this result both using a conformally transported regulator and intrinsically in terms of Araki relative entropy. Finally, we identify the modular-flow orbit with a Connes cocycle orbit and discuss possible applications to the AdS/CFT correspondence.