Holographic Calculations of Renyi Entropy

TL;DR

This paper develops a holographic method to compute Renyi entropy for conformal field theories with spherical entangling surfaces, relating thermal partition functions to traditional twist operator approaches, and explores its dependence on CFT parameters.

Contribution

It introduces a new holographic approach to calculate Renyi entropy for general CFTs with spherical entangling surfaces, linking thermal and twist operator methods.

Findings

Renyi entropy is a complex nonlinear function of CFT parameters.

Established a relation between thermal partition functions and twist operator calculations.

Calculated the scaling dimensions of twist operators in holographic models.

Abstract

We extend the approach of Casini, Huerta and Myers to a new calculation of the Renyi entropy of a general CFT in d dimensions with a spherical entangling surface, in terms of certain thermal partition functions. We apply this approach to calculate the Renyi entropy in various holographic models. Our results indicate that in general, the Renyi entropy will be a complicated nonlinear function of the central charges and other parameters which characterize the CFT. We also exhibit the relation between this new thermal calculation and a conventional calculation of the Renyi entropy where a twist operator is inserted on the spherical entangling surface. The latter insight also allows us to calculate the scaling dimension of the twist operators in the holographic models.