Entanglement Entropy, Trace Anomalies and Holography

A. Schwimmer, S. Theisen

Published 2008-02-07, updated 2008-02-22Version 2

The holographic representation of the entanglement entropy of four dimensional conformal field theories is studied. By generalizing the replica trick the anomalous terms in the entanglement entropy are evaluated. The same terms in the holographic representation are calculated by a method which does not require the solution of the equations of motion or a cut off. The two calculations disagree for rather generic geometries. The reasons for the disagreement are analyzed.