# Replica wormholes
Replica wormholes play an important role in recent developments that resolved the black hole [[0131 Information paradox|information paradox]]. They are saddles of the [[0555 Gravitational path integral|gravitational path integral]] with a boundary condition that involves multiples copies of the original boundary. The multiple copies arise because the [[0301 Entanglement entropy|entanglement entropy]] can be written as the $n\to 1$ limit of the [[0293 Renyi entropy|Renyi entropy]] with index $n$, a quantity whose definition involves $n$ copies of the original spacetime.
Just like how Lewkowycz-Maldacena proved the [[0007 RT surface|RT/HRT]] formula, the replica wormholes were used to prove the [[0213 Islands|island formula]].
## Refs
- parent page: [[0131 Information paradox]]
- originals
- "east coast": [[2019#Almheiri, Hartman, Maldacena, Shaghoulian, Tajdini]]
- "west coast": [[2019#Penington, Shenker, Stanford, Yang]]
## For non-gravitational systems
- [[Ohmori2021]][](https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.07854)
- replica instanton
- [[0246 Spin glass]]
- [[SuZhangZhai2021]]@[](https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.11238)
- Page curve from non-Markovianity
## Things it can compute
- entanglement entropy
- negativity
- [[2021#Dong, Qi, Walter]]
- entanglement of purification?
- unitarity issues
- Zhenbin Yang and Stanford in progress (as of 20210120)
- global symmetry violation
- via computing scattering amplitude
- [[2020#Hsin, Iliesiu, Yang]]
## Applications
- to CFT OPE
- [[2020#Belin, de Boer]]
- to chaotic CFT via Renyi calculations
- [[2021#Sasieta]]