The Standard Model Symmetry and Qubit Entanglement

Abstract

Research at the intersection of quantum gravity and quantum information theory has seen significant success in describing the emergence of spacetime and gravity from quantum states whose entanglement entropy approximately obeys an area law. In a different direction, the Kaluza–Klein proposal aims to recover gauge symmetries by means of dimensional reduction in higher-dimensional gravitational theories. Integrating both of these, gravitational and gauge degrees of freedom in 3+1 dimensions may be obtained upon dimensional reduction in higher-dimensional emergent gravity. To this end, we show that entangled systems of two and three qubits can be associated with 5+1- and 9+1-dimensional spacetimes, respectively, which are reduced to 3+1 dimensions upon singling out a preferred complex direction. Depending on the interpretation of the residual symmetry, either the Standard Model gauge group, SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1)/Z6, or the symmetry of Minkowski spacetime together with the gauge symmetry of a right-handed 'half-generation' of fermions can be recovered. Thus, there seems to be a natural way to accommodate the chirality of the weak force in the given construction. This motivates a picture in which spacetime emerges from the area law contribution to the entanglement entropy, while gauge and matter degrees of freedom are obtained due to area-law-violating terms. Furthermore, we highlight the possibility of using this construction in quantum simulations of Standard Model fields.