Renormalized Entanglement Entropy Research Articles

A note on the entanglement entropy of primary fermion fields in JT gravity* *Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11975116)

In this paper we analyze and discuss 2D Jackiw-Teitelboim (JT) gravity coupled to primary fermion fields in asymptotically anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetimes. We obtain a particular solution of the massless Dirac field outside the extremal black hole horizon and find the solution for the dilaton in JT gravity. As two dimensional JT gravity spacetime is conformally flat, we calculate the two point correlators of primary fermion fields under the Weyl transformations. The primary goal of this work is to present a standard technique, called resolvent, rather than using CFT methods. We redefine the fields in terms of the conformal factor as fermion fields and use the resolvent technique to derive the renormalized entanglement entropy for massless Dirac fields in JT gravity.

Properties of gapped systems in AdS/BCFT

We study the conductivities and entanglement structures of two different holographic gapped systems at zero density in the presence of boundaries within AdS/BCFT. The first gapped system is described by the Einstein-scalar gravity and the second one is the dual of AdS soliton geometry. We show that in both these two systems the bulk and boundary conductivities along the spatial direction of the boundary of BCFT are trivial. For the first system, when we increase the size of the subsystem the renormalized entanglement entropy is always non-negative and monotonically decreasing with discontinuous, or continuous, or smooth behavior, depending on the effective tension of the brane. While for the AdS soliton with a boundary, the renormalized entanglement entropy only exhibits a discontinuous drop when we increase the size of the subsystem.

Renormalized entanglement entropy and curvature invariants

Renormalized entanglement entropy can be defined using the replica trick for any choice of renormalization scheme; renormalized entanglement entropy in holographic settings is expressed in terms of renormalized areas of extremal surfaces. In this paper we show how holographic renormalized entanglement entropy can be expressed in terms of the Euler invariant of the surface and renormalized curvature invariants. For a spherical entangling region in an odd-dimensional CFT, the renormalized entanglement entropy is proportional to the Euler invariant of the holographic entangling surface, with the coefficient of proportionality capturing the (renormalized) F quantity. Variations of the entanglement entropy can be expressed elegantly in terms of renormalized curvature invariants, facilitating general proofs of the first law of entanglement.

Shape dependence of renormalized holographic entanglement entropy

We study the holographic entanglement entropy of deformed entangling regions in three-dimensional CFTs dual to Einstein-AdS gravity, using a renormalization scheme based on the addition of extrinsic counterterms. In this prescription, when even- dimensional manifolds are considered, the universal contribution to the entanglement entropy is identified as the renormalized volume of the Ryu-Takayanagi hypersurface, which is written as the sum of a topological and a curvature term. It is shown that the change in the renormalized entanglement entropy due to the deformation of the entangling surface is encoded purely in the curvature contribution. In turn, as the topological part is given by the Euler characteristic of the Ryu-Takayanagi surface, it remains shape independent. Exploiting the covariant character of the extrinsic counterterms, we apply the renormalization scheme for the case of deformed entangling regions in AdS4/CFT3, recovering the results found in the literature. Finally, we provide a derivation of the relation between renormalized entanglement entropy and Willmore energy. The presence of a lower bound of the latter makes manifest the relation between the AdS curvature of the Ryu-Takayanagi surface and the strong subadditivity property.

Holographic information theoretic quantities for Lifshitz black hole

In this paper, we have investigated the holographic entanglement entropy for a linear subsystem in a 3+1-dimensional Lifshitz black hole. The entanglement entropy has been analysed in both the infra-red and ultra-violet limits, and has also been computed in the near horizon approximation. The notion of a generalized temperature in terms of the renormalized entanglement entropy has been introduced. This also leads to a generalized thermodynamics like law E=frac{1}{2}T_g S_{REE}. The generalized temperature has been defined in such a way that it reduces to the Hawking temperature in the infra-red limit. We find that the inverse of the generalized temperature (beta _g=1/T_g) attains a non-zero value when the subsystem length becomes zero although it is zero in case of the Schwarzschild-AdS black hole. We have then computed the holographic subregion complexity. We find that the subregion complexity has logarithmic divergence which was absent in case of the 3+1-dimensional Schwarzschild-AdS black hole. Then the Fisher information metric and the fidelity susceptibility for the same linear subsystem have also been computed using the bulk dual prescriptions. It has been observed that the two metrics are not related to each other.

Renormalized AdS gravity and holographic entanglement entropy of even-dimensional CFTs

We derive a general formula for renormalized entanglement entropy in even- dimensional CFTs holographically dual to Einstein gravity in one dimension higher. In order to renormalize, we adapt the Kounterterm method to asymptotically locally AdS manifolds with conical singularities. On the gravity side, the computation considers extrin- sic counterterms and the use of the replica trick à la Lewkowycz-Maldacena. The boundary counterterm Bd is shown to satisfy a key property, in direct analogy to the Euler density: when evaluated on a conically singular manifold, it decomposes into a regular part plus a codimension-2 version of itself located at the conical singularity. The renormalized entropy thus obtained is shown to correspond to the universal part of the holographic entangle- ment entropy, which for spherical entangling surfaces is proportional to the central charge a that is the subject of the a-theorem. We also review and elucidate various aspects of the Kounterterm approach, including in particular its full compatibility with the Dirichlet condition for the metric at the conformal boundary, that is of standard use in holography.

Entanglement entropy for TT deformed CFT in general dimensions

We consider deformation of a generic d dimensional (d≥2) large-N CFT on a sphere by a spin-0 operator which is bilinear in the components of the stress tensor. Such a deformation has been proposed to be holographically dual to an AdSd+1 bulk with a hard radial cut-off. We compute the exact partition function and find the entanglement entropy from the field theory side in various dimensions and compare with the corresponding holographic results. We also compute renormalized entanglement entropy both in field theory and holography and find complete agreement between them.

Topological terms, AdS2n gravity, and renormalized entanglement entropy of holographic CFTs

We extend our topological renormalization scheme for Entanglement Entropy to holographic CFTs of arbitrary odd dimensions in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence. The procedure consists in adding the Chern form as a boundary term to the area functional of the Ryu-Takayanagi minimal surface. The renormalized Entanglement Entropy thus obtained can be rewritten in terms of the Euler characteristic and the AdS curvature of the minimal surface. This prescription considers the use of the Replica Trick to express the renormalized Entanglement Entropy in terms of the renormalized gravitational action evaluated on the conically-singular replica manifold extended to the bulk. This renormalized action is obtained in turn by adding the Chern form as the counterterm at the boundary of the 2n-dimensional asymptotically AdS bulk manifold. We explicitly show that, up to next-to-leading order in the holographic radial coordinate, the addition of this boundary term cancels the divergent part of the Entanglement Entropy. We discuss possible applications of the method for studying CFT parameters like central charges.

Renormalization of entanglement entropy from topological terms

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.

Entanglement entropy of singular surfaces under relevant deformations in holography

In the vacuum state of a CFT, the entanglement entropy of singular surfaces contains a logarithmic universal term which is only due to the singularity of the entangling surface. We consider the relevant perturbation of a three dimensional CFT for singular entangling surface. We observe that in addition to the universal term due to the entangling surface, there is a new logarithmic term which corresponds to a relevant perturbation of the conformal field theory with a coefficient depending on the scaling dimension of the relevant operator. We also find a new power law divergence in the holographic entanglement entropy. In addition, we study the effect of a relevant perturbation in the Gauss-Bonnet gravity for a singular entangling surface. Again a logarithmic term shows up. This new term is proportional to both the dimension of the relevant operator and the Gauss-Bonnet coupling. We also introduce the renormalized entanglement entropy for a kink region which in the UV limit reduces to a universal positive finite term.

Non-conformal entanglement entropy

We explore the behaviour of renormalized entanglement entropy in a variety of holographic models: non-conformal branes; the Witten model for QCD; UV conformal RG flows driven by explicit and spontaneous symmetry breaking and Schrödinger geometries. Focussing on slab entangling regions, we find that the renormalized entanglement entropy captures features of the previously defined entropic c-function but also captures deep IR behaviour that is not seen by the c-function. In particular, in theories with symmetry breaking, the renormalized entanglement entropy saturates for large entangling regions to values that are controlled by the symmetry breaking parameters.

Entanglement entropy and Fisher information metric for closed bosonic strings in homogeneous plane wave background

We derive the extended renormalized entanglement entropy (EREE) and the Fisher information metric in the case of closed bosonic strings in homogeneous plane wave background. Our investigations are conducted within the framework of Thermo Field Dynamics (TFD). The formalism is also illustrated on the example of some particular models in condensed matter physics and the non-equilibrium case for system with dissipations.

Searching for a C-function on the three-dimensional sphere

We present a detailed analytic study on the three-dimensional sphere of the most popular candidates for C-functions, both for Dirac and scalar free massive fields. We discuss to which extent the effective action, the Rényi entanglement entropy and the renormalized entanglement entropy fulfill the conditions expected from C-functions. In view of the absence of a good candidate in the case of the scalar field, we introduce a new candidate, which we call the modified effective action, and analyze its pros and cons.

A bound on holographic entanglement entropy from inverse mean curvature flow

Entanglement entropies are notoriously difficult to compute. Large-N strongly-coupled holographic CFTs are an important exception, where the AdS/CFT dictionary gives the entanglement entropy of a CFT region in terms of the area of an extremal bulk surface anchored to the AdS boundary. Using this prescription, we show—for quite general states of (2 + 1)-dimensional such CFTs—that the renormalized entanglement entropy of any region of the CFT is bounded from above by a weighted local energy density. The key ingredient in this construction is the inverse mean curvature (IMC) flow, which we suitably generalize to flows of surfaces anchored to the AdS boundary. Our bound can then be thought of as a ‘subregion’ Penrose inequality in asymptotically locally AdS spacetimes, similar to the Penrose inequalities obtained from IMC flows in asymptotically flat spacetimes. Combining the result with positivity of relative entropy, we argue that our bound is valid perturbatively in 1/N, and conjecture that a restricted version of it holds in any CFT.

Renormalized entanglement entropy

We develop a renormalization method for holographic entanglement entropy based on area renormalization of entangling surfaces. The renormalized entanglement entropy is derived for entangling surfaces in asymptotically locally anti-de Sitter spacetimes in general dimensions and for entangling surfaces in four dimensional holographic renormalization 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 deformations by operators of dimension $3/2 < \Delta < 5/2$ 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 entanglement 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.

Renormalized entanglement entropy on cylinder

We develop a framework of calculating entanglement entropy for non-conformal field theories with the use of the dilaton effective action. To illustrate it, we locate a theory on a cylinder $\mathbb{R} \times \mathbb{S}^{2}$ and compute entanglement entropy of a cap-like region perturbatively with respect to the mass for a free massive scalar field. A renormalized entanglement entropy (REE) is proposed to regularize the ultraviolet divergence on the cylinder. We find that the REE decreases monotonically both in the small and large mass regions as the mass increases. We confirm all of these behaviors by the numerical calculations, which further shows the monotonic decrease of the REE in the entire renormalization group flow.

Holographic entanglement entropy ofN=2*renormalization group flow

The $\mathcal{N}={2}^{*}$ theory is obtained by deforming $\mathcal{N}=4$ supersymmetric Yang--Mills theory with two relevant operators of dimensions 2 and 3. We study the holographic entanglement entropy of the $\mathcal{N}={2}^{*}$ theory along the whole renormalization group flow. We find that in the UV the holographic entanglement entropy for an arbitrary entangling region receives a universal logarithmic correction, which is related to the relevant operator of dimension 3. This universal behavior can be interpreted on the field theory side by perturbatively evaluating the entanglement entropy of a conformal field theory (CFT) under relevant deformations. In the IR regime, we obtain the large $R$ behavior of the renormalized entanglement entropy for both a strip and a sphere entangling region, where $R$ denotes the size of the entangling region. A term proportional to $1/R$ is found for both cases, which can be attributed to the emergent ${\mathrm{CFT}}_{5}$ in the IR.

Renormalization group flow of entanglement entropy on spheres

We explore entanglement entropy of a cap-like region for a generic quantum field theory residing in the Bunch-Davies vacuum on de Sitter space. Entanglement entropy in our setup is identical with the thermal entropy in the static patch of de Sitter, and we derive a simple relation between the vacuum expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor trace and the RG flow of entanglement entropy. In particular, renormalization of the cosmological constant and logarithmic divergence of the entanglement entropy are interrelated in our setup. We confirm our findings by recovering known universal contributions for a free field theory deformed by a mass operator as well as obtain correct universal behaviour at the fixed points. Simple examples of entanglement entropy flows are elaborated in $d=2,3,4$. In three dimensions we find that while the renormalized entanglement entropy is stationary at the fixed points, it is not monotonic. We provide a computational evidence that the universal `area law' for a conformally coupled scalar is different from the known result in the literature, and argue that this difference survives in the limit of flat space. Finally, we carry out the spectral decomposition of entanglement entropy flow and discuss its application to the F-theorem.

Rényi entropy, stationarity, and entanglement of the conformal scalar

We extend previous work on the perturbative expansion of the Renyi entropy, $S_q$, around $q=1$ for a spherical entangling surface in a general CFT. Applied to conformal scalar fields in various spacetime dimensions, the results appear to conflict with the known conformal scalar Renyi entropies. On the other hand, the perturbative results agree with known Renyi entropies in a variety of other theories, including theories of free fermions and vector fields and theories with Einstein gravity duals. We propose a resolution stemming from a careful consideration of boundary conditions near the entangling surface. This is equivalent to a proper treatment of total-derivative terms in the definition of the modular Hamiltonian. As a corollary, we are able to resolve an outstanding puzzle in the literature regarding the Renyi entropy of ${\cal N}=4$ super-Yang-Mills near $q=1$. A related puzzle regards the question of stationarity of the renormalized entanglement entropy (REE) across a circle for a (2+1)-dimensional massive scalar field. We point out that the boundary contributions to the modular Hamiltonian shed light on the previously-observed non-stationarity. Moreover, IR divergences appear in perturbation theory about the massless fixed point that inhibit our ability to reliably calculate the REE at small non-zero mass.

Renormalized entanglement entropy for BPS black branes

We compute the renormalized entanglement entropy (REE) for BPS black solutions in ${\cal N}=2$, 4d gauged supergravity. We find that this quantity decreases monotonically with the size of the entangling region until it reaches a critical point, then increases and approaches the entropy density of the brane. This behavior can be understood as a consequence of the REE being driven by two competing factors, namely entanglement and the mixedness of the black brane. In the UV entanglement dominates, whereas in the IR the mixedness takes over.