AdS plane waves and entanglement entropy

TL;DR

This paper studies how entanglement entropy behaves in AdS plane wave backgrounds, revealing dependence on orientation and phase transition phenomena related to energy fluxes in dual anisotropic systems.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of holographic entanglement entropy in AdS plane waves, highlighting orientation-dependent effects and phase transition-like behavior.

Findings

Entanglement entropy depends on strip orientation relative to energy flux.

Orthogonal strips exhibit a phase transition in entanglement entropy.

Logarithmic behavior observed in $AdS_5$ plane wave entanglement entropy.

Abstract

AdS plane waves describe simple backgrounds which are dual to anisotropically excited systems with energy fluxes. Upon dimensional reduction, they reduce to hyperscaling violating spacetimes: in particular, the $AdS_5$ plane wave is known to exhibit logarithmic behavior of the entanglement entropy. In this paper, we carry out an extensive study of the holographic entanglement entropy for strip-shaped subsystems in AdS plane wave backgrounds. We find that the results depend crucially on whether the strip is parallel or orthogonal to the energy current. In the latter case, we show that there is a phenomenon analogous to a phase transition.