Bulk metric reconstruction from entanglement data via minimal surface area variations

Abstract: We investigate the reconstruction of asymptotically anti-de Sitter (AdS) bulk geometries from boundary entanglement entropy data for ball-shaped entangling regions. By deriving an explicit inversion formula, we relate variations in entanglement entropy to deviations of the bulk metric about a fixed background. Applying this formula, we recover the Schwarzschild-AdS spacetime in the low-temperature regime to first order. We further extend our analysis to include deformations of the bulk geometry with nontrivial dependence on boundary directions, and propose an iterative reconstruction scheme aimed at recovering the full spacetime starting close to a conformal fixed point. We do this by building on recent advances in the mathematics of inverse problems by introducing the higher-order linearization method as a new tool in the context of holographic bulk reconstruction.