The geometry and entanglement entropy of surfaces in loop quantum gravity

Abstract: In loop quantum gravity, the area element of embedded spatial surfaces is given by a well-defined operator. We further characterize the quantized geometry of such surfaces by proposing definitions for operators quantizing scalar curvature and mean curvature. By investigating their properties, we shed light on the nature of the geometry of surfaces in loop quantum gravity. We also investigate the entanglement entropy across surfaces in the case where spin network edges are running within the surface. We observe that, on a certain class of states, the entropy gradient across a surface is proportional to the mean curvature. In particular, the entanglement entropy is constant for small deformations of a minimal surface in this case.