Entanglement entropy from surface terms in general relativity

Abstract

Entanglement entropy in local quantum field theories is typically ultraviolet divergent due to short distance effects in the neighbourhood of the entangling region. In the context of gauge/gravity duality, we show that surface terms in general relativity are able to capture this entanglement entropy. In particular, we demonstrate that for 1+1 dimensional CFTs at finite temperature whose gravity dual is the BTZ black hole, the Gibbons-Hawking-York term precisely reproduces the entanglement entropy which can be computed independently in the field theory.

6 pages 1 fig. Essay awarded honourable mention in the Gravity Research Foundation 2013 Awards for Essays on Gravitation. v2: to appear in IJMPD spl. issue

References in corpus (2)

• Seeing a c-theorem with holography
• Noether current from the surface term of gravitational action, Virasoro algebra and horizon entropy

Cited by in corpus (3)

• On generalized gravitational entropy, squashed cones and holography
• On entanglement entropy functionals in higher derivative gravity theories
• Constraining gravity using entanglement in AdS/CFT