Emergence of quadratic gravity from entanglement equilibrium

In this work, we derive the linearized equations of quadratic gravity from entanglement equilibrium of local causal diamonds. Rather than starting from the Wald entropy prescription (which depends on the gravitational Lagrangian), we employ a model independent approach based on the logarithmic corrections to horizon entanglement entropy. In this way, we are able to show the emergence of linearized quadratic gravity from entanglement equilibrium without using any a priori knowledge about gravitational dynamics. If the logarithmic correction to entropy has a negative sign, as predicted by replica trick calculations of entanglement entropy, we find that the quadratic gravity correction terms have the sign necessary to avoid tachyonic instabilities of the theory.