Universal terms for the entanglement entropy in 2+1 dimensions

The entanglement entropy for smooth regions $\cal A$ has a logarithmic divergent contribution with a shape dependent coefficient and that for regions with conical singularities an additional $\log ^2$ term. Comparing the coefficient of this extra term, obtained by direct holographic calculation for an infinite cone, with the corresponding limiting case for the shape dependent coefficient for a regularised cone, a mismatch by a factor two has been observed in the literature. W...

We use a mix of field theoretic and holographic techniques to elucidate various properties of quantum entanglement entropy. In (3+1)-dimensional conformal field theory we study the divergent terms in the entropy when the entangling surface has a conical or a wedge singularity. In (2+1)-dimensional field theory with a mass gap we calculate, for an arbitrary smooth entanglement contour, the expansion of the entropy in inverse odd powers of the mass. We show that the shape-depen...

The entanglement entropy of a generic $d$-dimensional conformal field theory receives a regulator independent contribution when the entangling region contains a (hyper)conical singularity of opening angle $\Omega$, codified in a function $a^{(d)}(\Omega)$. In arXiv:1505.04804, we proposed that for three-dimensional conformal field theories, the coefficient $\sigma$ characterizing the smooth surface limit of such contribution ($\Omega\rightarrow \pi$) equals the stress tensor ...

In this review we first introduce the general methods to calculate the entanglement entropy for free fields, within the Euclidean and the real time formalisms. Then we describe the particular examples which have been worked out explicitly in two, three and more dimensions.

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 R\'enyi 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 effec...

We identify various universal contributions to the entanglement entropy for massive free fields. As well as the `area' terms found in [1], we find other geometric contributions of the form discussed in [2]. We also compute analogous contributions for a strongly coupled field theory using the AdS/CFT correspondence. In this case, we find the results for strong and weak coupling do not agree.

We study the entanglement entropy within a spherical region for a free scalar field in a squeezed state in 3+1 dimensions. We show that, even for small squeezing, a volume term appears, whose coefficient is essentially independent of the field mass. This is in line with Page's argument that the entanglement entropy in an arbitrary quantum state is proportional to the number of degrees of freedom of the smaller subsystem. It follows that squeezed states can be considered as ar...

We study universal features in the shape dependence of entanglement entropy in the vacuum state of a conformal field theory (CFT) on $\mathbb{R}^{1,d-1}$. We consider the entanglement entropy across a deformed planar or spherical entangling surface in terms of a perturbative expansion in the infinitesimal shape deformation. In particular, we focus on the second order term in this expansion, known as the entanglement density. This quantity is known to be non-positive by the st...

In this note a new method for computing the entanglement entropy of a CFT holographically is explored. It consists of finding a bulk background with a boundary metric that has the conical singularities needed to compute the entanglement entropy in the usual QFT definition. An explicit calculation is presented for d=2.

A relation between the conformal anomaly and the logarithmic term in the entanglement entropy is known to exist for CFT's 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 non-trivial 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 bound...