We analyze the dependence of the effective action and the entanglement entropy in the Maxwell theory on the gauge fixing parameter $a$ in $d$ dimensions. For a generic value of $a$ the corresponding vector operator is nonminimal. The operator can be diagonalized in terms of the transverse and longitudinal modes. Using this factorization we obtain an expression for the heat kernel coefficients of the nonminimal operator in terms of the coefficients of two minimal Beltrami-Laplace operators acting on 0- and 1-forms. This expression agrees with an earlier result by Gilkey et al. Working in a regularization scheme with the dimensionful UV regulators we introduce three different regulators: for transverse, longitudinal and ghost modes, respectively. We then show that the effective action and the entanglement entropy do not depend on the gauge fixing parameter $a$ provided the certain ($a$-dependent) relations are imposed on the regulators. Comparing the entanglement entropy with the black hole entropy expressed in terms of the induced Newton's constant we conclude that their difference, the so-called Kabat's contact term, does not depend on the gauge fixing parameter $a$. We consider this as an indication of gauge invariance of the contact term.
We calculate numerically the logarithmic contribution to the entanglement entropy of a cylindrical region in three spatial dimensions for a Maxwell field. Our result does not agree with the analytical predictions concerning any conformal field theory in four dimensions according to which the coefficient is universal and proportional to the type c conformal anomaly. In cylindrical coordinates the problem decomposes into one dimensional ones along the radial coordinate for each angular momentum. The entanglement entropy of a Maxwell field is equivalent to the one of two identical decoupled scala…
We calculate the entanglement entropy of a slab of finite width in the pure Maxwell theory. We find that a large part of entropy is contributed by the entanglement of a mode, nonlocal in terms of the transverse magnetic field degrees of freedom. Even though the entangled mode is nonlocal, its contribution to the entropy is local in the sense that the entropy of a slab of a finite thickness is equal to the entropy of the boundary plus a correction exponential in thickness of the slab.
We elucidate the mismatch between the $A$-anomaly coefficient and the coefficient of the logarithmic term in the entanglement entropy of a Maxwell field. In contrast to the usual assumptions about the protection of renormalization group charges at the infrared, the logarithmic term is different for a free Maxwell field and a Maxwell field interacting with heavy charges. This is possible because of the presence of superselection sectors in the IR theory. However, the correction due to the coupling with charged vacuum fluctuations, that restores the anomaly coefficient, is independent of the pre…
We consider electromagnetism in a cylindrical manifold coupled to a nonrelativistic charged point-particle. Through the relation between this theory and the Landau model on a torus, we study the entanglement between the particle and the electromagnetic field. In particular, we compute the entanglement entropy in the ground state, which is degenerate, obtaining how it varies in the degeneracy subspace.
According to the gauge/gravity duality, the Van der Waals transition of charged AdS black holes in extended phase space is conjectured to be dual to a renormalization group flow on the space of field theories. So exploring the Van der Waals transition is potentially valuable for studying holographic properties of charged black hole thermodynamics. There are different transition behaviors for charged dilatonic AdS black holes in Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton (EMD) theory with string-inspired potential with different dilaton coupling constants in diverse dimensions. In this work, we find a special cl…
We consider entanglement entropy between two halves of space separated by a plane, in the theory of free photon in 3+1 dimensions. We show how to separate local gauge invariant quantities that belong to the two spatial regions. We calculate the entanglement entropy by integrating over the degrees of freedom in one half space using an approximation that assumes slow variation of the magnetic fields in longitudinal direction. We find that the entropy is proportional to the transverse area as expected. Interestingly the entanglement properties of the 2D transverse and longitudinal modes of magnet…
Despite the seeming simplicity of the theory, calculating (and even defining) entanglement entropy for the Maxwell theory of a $U(1)$ gauge field in (3+1) dimensions has been the subject of controversy. It is generally accepted that the ground state entanglement entropy for a region of linear size $L$ behaves as an area law with a subleading logarithm, $S = αL^2 -γ\log L$. While the logarithmic coefficient $γ$ is believed to be universal, there has been disagreement about its precise value. After carefully accounting for subtle boundary corrections, multiple analyses in the high energy literat…
We study the information quantities, including the holographic entanglement entropy (HEE), mutual information (MI) and entanglement of purification (EoP), over Gubser-Rocha model. The remarkable property of this model is the zero entropy density at ground state, in term of which we expect to extract novel, even singular informational properties in zero temperature limit. Surprisedly, we do not observe any singular behavior of entanglement-related physical quantities under the zero temperature limit. Nevertheless, we find a peculiar property from Gubser-Rocha model that in low temperature regio…
We previously proposed that entanglement across a planar surface can be obtained from the partition function on a Euclidean hourglass geometry. Here we extend the prescription to spherical entangling surfaces in conformal field theory. We use the prescription to evaluate log terms in the entropy of a CFT in two dimensions, a conformally-coupled scalar in four dimensions, and a Maxwell field in four dimensions. For Maxwell we reproduce the extractable entropy obtained by Soni and Trivedi. We take this as evidence that the hourglass prescription provides a Euclidean technique for evaluating extr…
The role of symmetries in what concerns entanglement entropy has been extensively explored in the last years and revealed a profound connection with the quantum field theory's algebraic structure. Recently, it was found that some universal contributions to the entanglement entropy and mutual information may be non uniquely defined in theories with generalized symmetries. Here, we study this issue in detail in the particular case of the entanglement entropy of the Maxwell theory in $(2+1)$ dimensions for rotationally symmetric regions. In this setup, the problem can be dimensionally reduced to …
Treating Maxwell soft hair as a transition function that relates U(1) gauge fields living in the asymptotic region and near-horizon region, the U(1) gauge parameter $ϕ$ naturally becomes a good label of those Maxwell soft hair degrees of freedom. This interpretation also builds the connection between Maxwell soft hair and U(1) edge modes living in the intermediate region, which admits a well-defined effective action description. We study the statistical properties by Euclidean path integral, which concludes that the soft hair density of state increases with black hole temperature. Hawking radi…
We consider defining a fuzzy space by a specific state in a fermionic field theory in terms of which all the observables for the space can be evaluated. This allows for a definition of entanglement for a fuzzy space by direct integration of the fields over a certain region. Even though the resulting formula for the entanglement entropy (EE) is similar to what has been used in the quantum Hall effect, our derivation provides a novel perspective. We also review and strengthen the arguments for the EE to be described by a generalized Chern-Simons form.
The entanglement entropy (EE) of gauge theories in three spacetime dimensions is analyzed using manifestly gauge-invariant variables defined directly in the continuum. Specifically, we focus on the Maxwell, Maxwell-Chern-Simons (MCS), and nonabelian Yang-Mills theories. Special attention is paid to the analysis of edge modes and their contribution to EE. The contact term is derived without invoking the replica method and its physical origin is traced to the phase space volume measure for the edge modes. The topological contribution to the EE for the MCS case is calculated. For all the abelian …
I recall my 'matter-gravity entanglement hypothesis' and briefly review the evidence for it, based partly on its seeming ability to resolve a number of puzzles related to quantum black holes including the black hole information loss puzzle. I point out that, according to this hypothesis, there is a quantity, i.e. the universe's 'matter-gravity entanglement entropy' -- which deserves to be considered the 'entropy of the universe' and which, with suitable initial conditions, will plausibly increase monotonically with cosmological time. In the last section, which is more tentative and raises a nu…
We consider entanglement across a planar boundary in flat space. Entanglement entropy is usually thought of as the von Neumann entropy of a reduced density matrix, but it can also be thought of as half the von Neumann entropy of a product of reduced density matrices on the left and right. The latter form allows a natural regulator in which two cones are smoothed into a Euclidean hourglass geometry. Since there is no need to tensor-factor the Hilbert space, the regulated entropy is manifestly gauge-invariant and has a manifest state-counting interpretation. We explore this prescription for scal…
In this paper, we analyze the thermodynamic properties of the Anti de Sitter black hole in the Einstein-Maxwell-Yang-Mills-AdS gravity (EMYM) via many approaches and in different thermodynamical ensembles (canonical/ grand canonical). First, we give a concise overview of this phase structure in the entropy-thermal diagram for fixed charges then we investigate this thermodynamical structure in fixed potentials ensemble. The Next relevant step is recalling the nonlocal observables such as holographic entanglement entropy and two-point correlation function to show that both observables exhibit a …
The light rings (LRs) topological charge (TC) of a spacetime measures the number of stable LRs minus the number of unstable LRs. It is invariant under smooth spacetime deformations obeying fixed boundary conditions. Asymptotically flat equilibrium black holes (BHs) have, generically, TC=$-1$. In Einstein-Maxwell theory, however, the Schwarzschild-Melvin BH - describing a neutral BH immersed in a strong magnetic field - has TC$=0$. This allows the existence of BHs without LRs and produces remarkable phenomenological features, like panoramic shadows. Here we investigate the generalised Schwarzsc…
We investigate the evolution of holographic entanglement entropy (HEE) and holographic complexity (HC) under a thermal quench in Einstein-Maxwell-Axion theory (EMA), which is dual to a field theory with momentum relaxation on the boundary. A strip-shaped boundary geometry is utilized to calculate HEE and HC via `entropy=surface' and `complexity=volume' conjecture, respectively. By fixing other parameters we claim that either large enough black hole charge or width of the strip will introduce swallow-tail behaviors in HEE and multi-values in HC due to the discontinuity of the minimum Hubeny-Ran…
The asymptotic symmetry analysis of Maxwell theory at spatial infinity of Minkowski space with $d\geq 3$ is performed. We revisit the action principle in de Sitter slicing and make it well-defined by an asymptotic gauge fixing. In consequence, the conserved charges are inferred directly by manipulating surface terms of the action. Remarkably, the antipodal condition on de Sitter space is imposed by demanding regularity of field strength at light cone for $d\geq 4$. We also show how this condition reproduces and generalizes the parity conditions for inertial observers treated in 3+1 formulation…
In this paper, we study the one-loop induced photon's effective action in the very special relativity electrodynamics in $(2+1)$ spacetime (VSR-QED$_{3}$). Due to the presence of new nonlocal couplings resulting from the VSR gauge symmetry, we have additional graphs contributing to the $\langle AA\rangle$ and $\langle AAA \rangle$ amplitudes. From these contributions, we discuss the VSR generalization of the Abelian Maxwell-Chern-Simons Lagrangian, consisting in the dynamical part and the Chern-Simons-like self-couplings, respectively. We use the VSR-Chern-Simons electrodynamics to discuss som…
In earlier work, we introduced a dynamical Einstein--Maxwell--dilaton model which mimics essential features of QCD (thermodynamics) below and above deconfinement. Although there are some subtle differences in the confining regime of our model as compared to the standard results, we do have a temperature dependent dual metric below $T_c$ as well, allowing for a richer and more realistic holographic modeling of the QCD phase structure. We now discuss how these features leave their imprints on the associated entanglement entropy when a strip region is introduced in the various phases. We uncover …
