On holographic defect entropy

Abstract

We study a number of (3 + 1)- and (2 + 1)-dimensional defect and boundary conformal field theories holographically dual to supergravity theories. In all cases the defects or boundaries are planar, and the defects are codimension-one. Using holography, we compute the entanglement entropy of a (hemi-)spherical region centered on the defect (boundary). We define defect and boundary entropies from the entanglement entropy by an appropriate background subtraction. For some (3 + 1)-dimensional theories we find evidence that the defect/boundary entropy changes monotonically under certain renormalization group flows triggered by operators localized at the defect or boundary. This provides evidence that the g-theorem of (1 + 1)-dimensional field theories generalizes to higher dimensions. © 2014 The Author(s).