Entwinement

Entwinement is the act or state of being entwined. In general usage, it refers to objects or relations that are interlaced, twisted together, or closely interwoven. The term is often used metaphorically to describe complex networks of people, ideas, loyalties, or identities in which elements cannot be fully understood in isolation.

In literature and social theory, entwinement conveys the way individuals or groups are mutually dependent and entangled within larger social fabrics. It signals that separation can be illusory, and that meaning emerges from the knot of interactions rather than from discrete components.

In theoretical physics, entwinement is a term used in holographic duality. It generalizes the idea of entanglement entropy to internal, non-spatial degrees of freedom in gauge theories, capturing correlations that do not arise from a simple spatial partition. In certain models, entwinement is related to the structure of bulk geometry and can illuminate aspects of regions behind horizons where conventional spatial partitions fail to describe entanglement.

The concept is intended to help explain how spacetime geometry in a holographic bulk might arise from quantum correlations beyond standard spatial entanglement. Entwinement thus complements entanglement entropy by addressing correlations among gauge-invariant degrees of freedom that are not neatly associated with a spatial region. It remains a theoretical construct subject to ongoing discussion and refinement.