The action of HRT-areas as operators in semiclassical gravity

Abstract: We study the action of Hubeny-Rangamani-Takayanagi (HRT) area operators on the covariant phase space of classical solutions. It has been previously proposed that this action generates a transformation which, roughly speaking, boosts the entanglement wedge on one side of the HRT surface relative to the entanglement wedge on the other side. We give a sharp argument for a precise result of this form in a general theory of Einstein-Hilbert gravity minimally coupled to matter, taking appropriate care with asymptotically Anti-de Sitter (AdS) boundary conditions. The result agrees with direct computations of commutators involving HRT areas in pure 2+1 dimensional Einstein-Hilbert gravity on spacetimes asymptotic to planar AdS. We also clarify the sense in which this transformation is singular in the deep UV when the HRT-surface is anchored to an asymptotically AdS boundary.