Work

Universal entanglement and boundary geometry in conformal field theory

Year: 2016

Type: article

Abstract: Employing a conformal map to hyperbolic space cross a circle, we compute the universal contribution to the vacuum entanglement entropy (EE) across a sphere in even-dimensional conformal field theory. Previous attempts to derive the EE in this way were hindered by a lack of knowledge of the appropriate boundary terms in the trace anomaly. In this paper we show that the universal part of the EE can be treated as a purely boundary effect. As a byproduct of our computation, we derive an explicit form for the A-type anomaly contribution to the Wess-Zumino term for the trace anomaly, now including boundary terms. In d = 4 and 6, these boundary terms generalize earlier bulk actions derived in the literature.

Source: Journal of High Energy Physics

DOI: 10.1007/jhep01(2016)162

Authors: Christopher P. Herzog, Kuo-Wei Huang, Kristan Jensen

Institution: Stony Brook University

Language: English

Topic: Black Holes and Theoretical Physics

Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: diamond

Funder: National Science Foundation

Award: Theoretical Physics