We propose a renormalization scheme for entanglement entropy of three-dimensional CFTs with a four-dimensional asymptotically AdS gravity dual in the context of the gauge/gravity correspondence. The procedure consists in adding the Chern form as a boundary term to the area functional of the Ryu-Takayanagi minimal surface. We provide an explicit prescription for the renormalized entanglement entropy, which is derived via the replica trick. This is achieved by considering a Euclidean gravitational action renormalized by the addition of the Chern form at the spacetime boundary, evaluated in the conically-singular replica manifold. We show that the addition of this boundary term cancels the divergent part of the entanglement entropy, recovering the results obtained by Taylor and Woodhead. We comment on how this prescription for renormalizing the entanglement entropy is in line with the general program of topological renormalization in asymptotically AdS gravity.
We propose a renormalization scheme for entanglement entropy of three-dimensional CFTs with a four-dimensional asymptotically AdS gravity dual in the context of the gauge/gravity correspondence. The procedure consists in adding the Chern form as a boundary term to the area functional of the Ryu-Takayanagi minimal surface. We provide an explicit prescription for the renormalized entanglement entropy, which is derived via the replica trick. This is achieved by considering a Euclidean gravitational action renormalized by the addition of the Chern form at the spacetime boundary, evaluated in the conically-singular replica manifold. We show that the addition of this boundary term cancels the divergent part of the entanglement entropy, recovering the results obtained by Taylor and Woodhead. We comment on how this prescription for renormalizing the entanglement entropy is in line with the general program of topological renormalization in asymptotically AdS gravity.
We consider entanglement entropy in the context of gauge/gravity duality for conformal field theories in even dimensions. The holographic prescription due to Ryu and Takayanagi (RT) leads to an equation describing how the entangling surface extends into the bulk geometry. We show that setting to zero, the timetime component of the Brown-York stress tensor evaluated on the co-dimension 1 entangling surface, leads to the same equation. By considering a spherical entangling surface as an example, we observe that the Euclidean actionmethods in AdS/CFT will lead to the RT area functional arising as a counterterm needed to regularize the stress tensor. We present arguments leading to a justification for the minimal area prescription.
We study entanglement Renyi entropies (EREs) of 1+1 dimensional CFTs with classical gravity duals. Using the replica trick the EREs can be related to a partition function of n copies of the CFT glued together in a particular way along the intervals. In the case of two intervals this procedure defines a genus n-1 surface and our goal is to find smooth three dimensional gravitational solutions with this surface living at the boundary. We find two families of handlebody solutions labelled by the replica index n. These particular bulk solutions are distinguished by the fact that they do not spontaneously break the replica symmetries of the boundary surface. We show that the regularized classical action of these solutions is given in terms of a simple numerical prescription. If we assume that they give the dominant contribution to the gravity partition function we can relate this classical action to the EREs at leading order in G_N. We argue that the prescription can be formulated for non-integer n. Upon taking the limit n -> 1 the classical action reproduces the predictions of the Ryu-Takayanagi formula for the entanglement entropy.
We study holographic entanglement entropy in 3-dimensional AdS gravity with conformal boundary conditions which fix the conformal class of the boundary metric and its extrinsic curvature, K, while leaving the Weyl mode dynamical. Extending Lewkowycz-Maldacena-Dong's replica construction, we derive the corresponding holographic entanglement entropy formula. We show that the fluctuating Weyl mode does not contribute additional entropy. The entropy of the full boundary is therefore the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy, and the entropy of a boundary subregion continues to obey the Ryu-Takayanagi prescription, namely, the area of a minimal surface divided by 4GN. We carry out explicit calculations for global AdS, rotating and non-rotating BTZ geometries. For an interval in AdS3 we find that the K-dependent holographic entanglement entropy is governed by cm=2GN3ℓ. For a thermal state at high conformal temperatures we find that, the entropy is governed by ceff=2GN3ℓ2Kℓ−K2ℓ2−4, the same effective central charge that governs the Cardy-like density of states, in agreement with previous results in the literature. Finally, we also compute the entanglement entropy directly from the conjectured dual boundary theory - a holographic CFT coupled with time-like Liouville theory and deformed by a marginal TTˉ like operator - and find SEE=3ceffln(ε2Rsinϕ0). This result for the state with no operator insertions (vacuum state ), provides an independent boundary realization of ceff while clarifying that this state is not the state dual to global AdS.
We develop a renormalization method for holographic entanglement entropy based on area renormalization of entangling surfaces. The renormalized entanglement en-tropy is derived for entangling surfaces in asymptotically locally anti-de Sitter spacetimes in general dimensions and for entangling surfaces in four dimensional holographic renor-malization group flows. The renormalized entanglement entropy for disk regions in AdS 4 spacetimes agrees precisely with the holographically renormalized action for AdS 4 with spherical slicing and hence with the F quantity, in accordance with the Casini-Huerta-Myers map. We present a generic class of holographic RG flows associated with deforma-tions by operators of dimension 3/2 < Δ < 5/2 for which the F quantity increases along the RG flow, hence violating the strong version of the F theorem. We conclude by explaining how the renormalized entanglement entropy can be derived directly from the renormalized partition function using the replica trick i.e. our renormalization method for the entangle-ment entropy is inherited directly from that of the partition function. We show explicitly how the entanglement entropy counterterms can be derived from the standard holographic renormalization counterterms for asymptotically locally anti-de Sitter spacetimes.
Holographic entanglement entropy of two disjoint intervals in AdS3/CFT2
The Ryu-Takayanagi conjecture predicts a holographic dual of the entanglement entropy of a CFT. It proposes that the entanglement entropy is given by the area of the minimal surface in the dual spacetime. In the semi-classical limit, this conjecture is supported by the saddle point approximation. If there are multiple classical solutions, it is assumed that only the minimal action contributes to the entanglement entropy. However, we will point out that these saddles equally contribute to the entanglement entropy in some cases. Therefore, the derivation of the conjecture is incomplete if there are multiple extremal surfaces that extend from a sub-system on the AdS boundary. We will consider two disjoint intervals in CFT1+1 as the simplest but non-trivial example, and propose another candidate for a holographic dual of the entanglement entropy of this system, which is the sum of all the signed areas of extremal surfaces in the dual spacetime. After that, we will derive it from the CFT calculations and propose the corresponding gravity side action.
It was proposed by Ryu and Takayanagi that the entanglement entropy in conformal field theory (CFT) is related through the AdS/CFT correspondence to the area of a minimal surface in the bulk. We apply this holographic geometrical method of calculating the entanglement entropy to study the vacuum case of a CFT which is holographically dual to empty anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetime. We present all possible minimal surfaces spanned on one or two spherical boundaries at AdS infinity. We give exact analytical expressions for the regularized areas of these surfaces and identify finite renormalized quantities. In the case of two disjoint boundaries the existence of two different phases of the entanglement entropy is confirmed. A trivial phase corresponds to two disconnected minimal surfaces, while the other one corresponds to a tube connecting the spherical boundaries. A transition between these phases is reminiscent of the finite temperature deconfinement transition in the CFT on the boundary. The exact analytical results are thus consistent with previous numerical and approximate computations. We also briefly discuss the character of a spacetime extension of the minimal surface spanned on two uniformly accelerated boundaries.