Phases of Wilson Lines in Conformal Field Theories.

We study the low-energy limit of Wilson lines (charged impurities) in conformal gauge theories in 2+1 and 3+1 dimensions. As a function of the representation of the Wilson line, certain defect operators can become marginal, leading to interesting renormalization group flows and for sufficiently large representations to complete or partial screening by charged fields. This result is universal: in large enough representations, Wilson lines are screened by the charged matter fields.

Black Holes Often Saturate Entanglement Entropy the Fastest.

There is a simple bound on how fast the entanglement entropy of a subregion of a many-body quantum system can saturate in a quench: t_{sat}≥R/v_{B}, where t_{sat} is the saturation time, R the radius of the largest inscribed sphere, and v_{B} the butterfly velocity characterizing operator growth. By combining analytic and numerical approaches, we show that in systems with a holographic dual, the saturation time is equal to this lower bound for a variety of differently shaped entangling surfaces, implying that the dual black holes saturate the entanglement entropy as fast as possible. This finding adds to the growing list of tasks that black holes are the fastest at.