Renormalization group flow of entanglement entropy on spheres

Omer Ben-Ami, Dean Carmi, Michael Smolkin

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

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 bare couplings 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. Inthreedimensionswefindthatwhiletherenormalizedentanglemententropy 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.

Original languageEnglish
Article number48
JournalJournal of High Energy Physics
Volume2015
Issue number8
DOIs
StatePublished - 17 Aug 2015
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015, The Author(s).

Keywords

  • Nonperturbative Effects
  • Renormalization Group

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Nuclear and High Energy Physics

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