2015/05/31 by Pablo Bueno, Robert C. Myers, William Witczak-Krempa +1 · 178 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Central charge #Conformal field theory #Conformal map #Conjecture #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Curvature #Entropy (arrow of time) #Geometry #Mathematical physics #Mathematics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Pure mathematics #Quantum #Quantum entanglement #Quantum mechanics #Theoretical physics #Universality (dynamical systems) #cond-mat.str-el #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.115.021602
published in Physical Review Letters 115(2), 021602 (American Physical Society) · 4+7 pages, 2+0 figures, 1+0 tables; v2: minor modifications to match published version, references added
openalex publication_date 2015/07/08 · arxiv created 2015/07/10 · arxiv updated 2015/07/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We study the contribution to the entanglement entropy of (2+1)-dimensional conformal field theories (CFTs) coming from a sharp corner in the entangling surface. This contribution is encoded in a function a(θ) of the corner opening angle, and was recently proposed as a measure of the degrees of freedom in the underlying CFT. We show that the ratio a(θ)/C(T), where C(T) is the central charge in the stress tensor correlator, is an almost universal quantity for a broad class of theories including various higher-curvature holographic models, free scalars, and fermions, and Wilson-Fisher fixed points of the O(N) models with N=1,2,3. Strikingly, the agreement between these different theories becomes exact in the limit θ→π, where the entangling surface approaches a smooth curve. We thus conjecture that the corresponding ratio is universal for general CFTs in three dimensions.