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arXiv:1112.4662 · Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical

Entropy of random entangling surfaces

Sergey N. Solodukhin

Published Sep 4, 2012• 3 citations
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Abstract

We consider the situation when a globally defined four-dimensional field system is separated on two entangled sub-systems by a dynamical (random) two-dimensional surface. The reduced density matrix averaged over ensemble of random surfaces of fixed area and the corresponding average entropy are introduced. The average entanglement entropy is analyzed for a generic conformal field theory in four dimensions. Two important particular cases are considered. In the first, both the intrinsic metric on the entangling surface and the spacetime metric are fluctuating. An important example of this type is when the entangling surface is a black hole horizon, the fluctuations of which cause necessarily the fluctuations in the spacetime geometry. In the second case, the spacetime is considered to be fixed. The detail analysis is carried out for the random entangling surfaces embedded in flat Minkowski spacetime. In all cases the problem reduces to an effectively two-dimensional problem of random surfaces which can be treated by means of the well-known conformal methods. Focusing on the logarithmic terms in the entropy we predict the appearance of a new $\ln\ln(A)$ term.

DOI
10.1088/1751-8113/45/37/374024

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We consider the situation when a globally defined four-dimensional field system is separated on two entangled sub-systems by a dynamical (random) two-dimensional surface. The reduced density matrix averaged over ensemble of random surfaces of fixed area and the corresponding average entropy are introduced. The average entanglement entropy is analyzed for a generic conformal field theory in four dimensions. Two important particular cases are considered. In the first, both the intrinsic metric on the entangling surface and the spacetime metric are fluctuating. An important example of this type is when the entangling surface is a black hole horizon, the fluctuations of which cause necessarily the fluctuations in the spacetime geometry. In the second case, the spacetime is considered to be fixed. The detail analysis is carried out for the random entangling surfaces embedded in flat Minkowski spacetime. In all cases the problem reduces to an effectively two-dimensional problem of random surfaces which can be treated by means of the well-known conformal methods. Focusing on the logarithmic terms in the entropy we predict the appearance of a new ln⁡ln⁡(A)\ln\ln(A)lnln(A) term.
We consider the situation when a globally defined four-dimensional field system is separated on two entangled sub-systems by a dynamical (random) two-dimensional surface. The reduced density matrix averaged over ensemble of random surfaces of fixed area and the corresponding average entropy are introduced. The average entanglement entropy is analyzed for a generic conformal field theory in four dimensions. Two important particular cases are considered. In the first, both the intrinsic metric on the entangling surface and the spacetime metric are fluctuating. An important example of this type is when the entangling surface is a black hole horizon, the fluctuations of which cause necessarily the fluctuations in the spacetime geometry. In the second case, the spacetime is considered to be fixed. The detail analysis is carried out for the random entangling surfaces embedded in flat Minkowski spacetime. In all cases the problem reduces to an effectively two-dimensional problem of random surfaces which can be treated by means of the well-known conformal methods. Focusing on the logarithmic terms in the entropy we predict the appearance of a new ln⁡ln⁡(A)\ln\ln(A)lnln(A) term.
Entanglement entropy in even-dimensional conformal field theories (CFTs) contains well-known universal terms arising from the conformal anomaly. R\'enyi entropies are natural generalizations of the entanglement entropy that are much less understood. Above two spacetime dimensions, the universal terms in the R\'enyi entropies are unknown for general entangling geometries. We conjecture a new structure in the dependence of the four-dimensional R\'enyi entropies on the intrinsic and extrinsic geometry of the entangling surface. We provide evidence for this conjecture by direct numerical computations in the free scalar and fermion field theories. The computation involves relating the four-dimensional free massless R\'enyi entropies across cylindrical entangling surfaces to corresponding three-dimensional massive R\'enyi entropies across circular entangling surfaces. Our numerical technique also allows us to directly probe other interesting aspects of three-dimensional R\'enyi entropy, including the massless renormalized R\'enyi entropy and calculable contributions to the perimeter law.
A relation between the conformal anomaly and the logarithmic term in the entanglement entropy is known to exist for CFTs in even dimensions. In odd dimensions, the local anomaly and the logarithmic term in the entropy are absent. As was observed recently, there exists a nontrivial integrated anomaly if an odd-dimensional spacetime has boundaries. We show that, similarly, there exists a logarithmic term in the entanglement entropy when the entangling surface crosses the boundary of spacetime. The relation of the entanglement entropy to the integrated conformal anomaly is elaborated for three-dimensional theories. Distributional properties of intrinsic and extrinsic geometries of the boundary in the presence of conical singularities in the bulk are established. This allows one to find contributions to the entropy that depend on the relative angle between the boundary and the entangling surface.
Abstract We enumerate the cases in 2d conformal field theory where the logarithm of the reduced density matrix (the entanglement or modular Hamiltonian) may be written as an integral over the energy-momentum tensor times a local weight. These include known examples and new ones corresponding to the time-dependent scenarios of a global and local quench. In these latter cases the entanglement Hamiltonian depends on the momentum density as well as the energy density. In all cases the entanglement spectrum is that of the appropriate boundary CFT. We emphasize the role of boundary conditions at the entangling surface and the appearance of boundary entropies as universal O (1) terms in the entanglement entropy.
We study the entanglement entropy of theories that are derived from relevant perturbation of given CFTs for regions with a singular boundary by using the AdS/CFT correspondence. In the smooth case, it is well known that a relevant deformation of the boundary theory by the relevant operator with scaling dimension Δ=d+22Δ=\frac{d+2}{2}Δ=2d+2​ generates a logarithmic universal term to the entanglement entropy. As the smooth case, when the boundary CFT deformed by a relevant operator, we find that the entanglement entropy of singular surface also contains a new logarithmic term which is due to relevant perturbation of the conformal field theory, and depends on the scaling dimension of relevant operator. We also find for extended singular surfaces, cn×Rmc_{n}\times R^{m}cn​×Rm, as well as logarithmic term, the new universal double logarithmic terms may appear depending on the scaling dimension of relevant operator and spacetime dimensions. These new terms are due to relevant perturbation of the boundary theory.