# How does entanglement create empty space?

It is claimed that empty space is full of quantum fields which their waves perfectly cancel out each other, but this can only happens when all the waves are entangled. Is this claim valid because I thought as long as there is no excitation in the field it remains empty? What about non-zero higgs field?

• When you talk about fields cancelling what do you mean? Are you referring to the (alleged) cancelling of the zero point energy? – John Rennie Jan 18 at 6:15
• @JohnRennie: it only mentions "empty because the vibrations cancel each other out. And to do this, they must be entangled. The cancellation requires the full set of vibrations; a subset won’t necessarily cancel out. But a subset is all you ever see." I am still looking up zero point energy. – user6760 Jan 18 at 6:34
• Can you cite the source where you have seen this statement? As far as I know there is no concept of space being empty because quantum fields cancel each other out. – John Rennie Jan 18 at 6:39
• @JohnRennie: [time entanglement] (quantamagazine.org/…) – user6760 Jan 18 at 6:44
• That article is about a generalization of the Unruh effect, which happens to an accelerated detector. Entanglement and cancellation can play a role in the theory of the effect, so perhaps this refers to an analogous analysis for a detector at rest. But without knowing exactly what the author is talking about, I can't endorse the claim. Just because 0 = 1 + (-1), doesn't mean that every nothingness is really two somethings that cancel... – Mitchell Porter Jan 18 at 7:58

## 2 Answers

When you draw the Cartesian 3 axis of (x,y,z), each point in space described by accurate numbers, do these numbers change anything in space? They are a model , a mathematical map of space, useful for describing , for example, gravitational interactions as well as all of classical physics.

Quantum field theory uses the plane wave mathematical solutions of the quantum mechanical equations describing the particles in the standard model of physics, conceptually as a "coordinate system" through which interactions of these particles can be modeled, by the use of Feynman diagrams.

It is the Feynman diagrams that hold the information of entanglement, a meta-level on the fields, not the hypothesized fields. It is similar to the meta level of written language based on the alphabet, the meaning is in the combinations of the alphabet, not in the 24 letters.

The non zero vacuum expectation value, VEV, of the Higgs field is similar, in the coordinate system analogy, to picking another $$(0,0,0)$$ with a different potential energy, and one has to go into the mathematics of the model to understand what is happening . The fields in the table of particle physics, excepting the Higgs, have $$0$$ VEV.

The speculative idea that spacetime may emerge out of quantum entanglement has its basis in the mathematics of tensor networks. A tensor network provides a way of describing a highly entangled quantum state.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.00006

Surprisingly, the graph geometry of the connections in the tensor network corresponds to the spatial geometry of a spacelike slice of a particular spacetime called anti-deSitter space (ADS).

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.00621.pdf

This particular spacetime is important in string theory, but physicists are also trying to understand whether there are connections between entanglement and other spacetimes.