Extended Thermodynamics and Renyi Entropy Beyond Fixed Central Charge

Abstract

An outstanding problem in the framework of conformal thermodynamics concerns the interpretation of variations in the central charge $C$. In this paper, we construct a novel central-charge Rényi entropy via the Casini-Huerta-Myers (CHM) map by considering thermal CFTs on a hyperbolic cylinder within a fixed charge, field theory volume and central charge potential $(\tilde{Q},\mathcal{V},\hat{I}{¼}_C)$ grand canonical ensemble. We demonstrate that the resulting entropy satisfies all four fundamental Rényi entropy inequalities throughout the admissible range of $\hat{I}{¼}_C$, establishing its consistency as a genuine Rényi measure. Physically, this novel measure extends conventional Rényi entropy by capturing the degree of entanglement across a statistical ensemble of holographic CFTs with fluctuating degrees of freedom. Furthermore, our conformal thermodynamic analysis of near-extremal configurations reveals that residual entropy arises from the central charge sector rather than thermal excitations. The mass gap that separates the extremal state and the first thermal excitation introduces a characteristic temperature scale ${\tilde{T}}_{\ast }$, which translates via the CHM map into a distinguished characteristic Rényi index $n_{\ast }$. Crucially, we propose that $n_{\ast }$ separates the theory space into two qualitatively distinct statistical regimes: a dominant-theory regime ($n>n_{\ast }$) governed by the most probable CFT realizations, and a multi-theory regime ($n<n_{\ast }$) where a broader spectrum of fluctuating theories and higher-energy modular excitations becomes increasingly relevant.