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Entanglement revivals and scrambling for evaporating black holes

Levy B. N. Batista1,*, Nicolò Bragagnolo1,†, Rhys Holmes2,‡, and S. Prem Kumar1,§

  • 1Centre for Quantum Fields and Gravity, Department of Physics, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea, SA2 8PP, United Kingdom
  • 2School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University, 5 The Parade, Cardiff, CF24 3AA, United Kingdom

  • *Contact author: L.DNBatista@swansea.ac.uk
  • †Contact author: nicolo.bragagnolo@swansea.ac.uk
  • ‡Contact author: HolmesRA1@cardiff.ac.uk
  • §Contact author: s.p.kumar@swansea.ac.uk
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 046005 – Published 6 August, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/z1j3-zq5g

Abstract

We investigate the spreading of entanglement, and entanglement memory effects, in two-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT) propagating on evaporating black hole backgrounds. Memory effects leading to late-time spikes in mutual information for widely separated intervals are well known in CFTs admitting a quasiparticle description. In this work we examine the effect of black hole scrambling on late time mutual information spikes for disjoint intervals in free fermion CFT prepared in a thermofield double state. Late-time entanglement revival is driven by island-induced purification of modes in the union of the intervals. We show across two distinct 2D gravity models, Jackiw-Teitelboim (JT) gravity and the Russo-Susskind-Thorlacius (RST) model, that parametrically dialing up black hole scrambling time smooths out and suppresses entanglement spikes until they disappear at a critical scale, interpolating between free quasiparticle and maximal scrambling pictures. At the critical point, the interval lengths are exponential in black hole scrambling time. We further find a very closely related effect manifest as an entanglement dip for a single interval in a single-sided evaporating RST black hole.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 046005– Published 6 August, 2026
  • Received 18 May 2026
  • Accepted 14 July 2026
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