English

Entanglement entropy of a Maxwell field on the sphere

High Energy Physics - Theory 2016-05-25 v1

Abstract

We compute the logarithmic coefficient of the entanglement entropy on a sphere for a Maxwell field in d=4d=4 dimensions. In spherical coordinates the problem decomposes into one dimensional ones along the radial coordinate for each angular momentum. We show the entanglement entropy of a Maxwell field is equivalent to the one of two identical massless scalars from which the mode of l=0l=0 has been removed. This shows the relation clogM=2(clogSclogSl=0)c^M_{\log}=2 (c^S_{\log}-c^{S_{l=0}}_{\log}) between the logarithmic coefficient in the entropy for a Maxwell field clogMc^M_{\log}, the one for a d=4d=4 massless scalar clogSc_{\log}^S, and the logarithmic coefficient clogSl=0c^{S_{l=0}}_{\log} for a d=2d=2 scalar with Dirichlet boundary condition at the origin. Using the accepted values for these coefficients clogS=1/90c_{\log}^S=-1/90 and clogSl=0=1/6c^{S_{l=0}}_{\log}=1/6 we get clogM=16/45c^M_{\log}=-16/45, which coincides with Dowker's calculation, but does not match the coefficient 3145-\frac{31}{45} in the trace anomaly for a Maxwell field. We have numerically evaluated these three numbers clogMc^M_{\log}, clogSc^S_{\log} and clogSl=0c^{S_{l=0}}_{\log}, verifying the relation, as well as checked they coincide with the corresponding logarithmic term in mutual information of two concentric spheres.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1512.06182,
  title  = {Entanglement entropy of a Maxwell field on the sphere},
  author = {Horacio Casini and Marina Huerta},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1512.06182},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

18 pages, 5 figures