Instantons and Entanglement Entropy

We would like to put the area law -- believed to by obeyed by entanglement entropies in the ground state of a local field theory -- to scrutiny in the presence of non-perturbative effects. We study instanton corrections to entanglement entropy in various models whose instanton effects are well understood, including $U(1)$ gauge theory in 2+1 dimensions and false vacuum decay in $\phi^4$ theory, and we demonstrate that the area law is indeed obeyed in these models. We also perform numerical computations for toy wavefunctions mimicking the theta vacuum of the (1+1)-dimensional Schwinger model. Our results indicate that such superpositions exhibit no more violation of the area law than the logarithmic behavior of a single Fermi surface.Comment: 29 pages, 4 figures, typos corrected, substantially revised, published versio

Holographic Chern-Simons Defects

We study SU(N) Yang-Mills-Chern-Simons theory in the presence of defects that shift the Chern-Simons level from a holographic point of view by embedding the system in string theory. The model is a D3-D7 system in Type IIB string theory, whose gravity dual is given by the AdS soliton background with probe D7-branes attaching to the AdS boundary along the defects. We holographically renormalize the free energy of the defect system with sources, from which we obtain the correlation functions for certain operators naturally associated to these defects. We find interesting phase transitions when the separation of the defects as well as the temperature are varied. We also discuss some implications for the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect and for two-dimensional QCD.Comment: 56 pages, 19 figures, v2: sign convention for CS level in terms of number of D7 branes switched, UV behavior of one and two point functions added in sec. 5.4.1 and 5.4.3, references added, typos correcte

GR 20 Parallel Session A3: Modified Gravity

This is the contribution representing Parallel Session A3, on Modified Gravity, in the Proceedings of the GR 20 Conference (July 2013, Warszawa, Poland). It consists of three invited chapters, selected by the Session Chair (P.H.) to represent the broad spectrum of topics discussed in the Session, which ranged from theoretical and phenomenological, to experimental, observational and numerical aspects of gravity. The three chapters are "Einstein-Aether Theory: Thermodynamics of Universal Horizons" by Arif Mohd, "The Curious Case of Conformal Anomalies in Horava-Lifshitz Gravity" by Charles M. Melby-Thompson, and "Detectability of Scalar Gravitational-Wave Bursts with LIGO and Virgo" by Peter Shawhan.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure

General Covariance in Quantum Gravity at a Lifshitz Point

In the minimal formulation of gravity with Lifshitz-type anisotropic scaling, the gauge symmetries of the system are foliation-preserving diffeomorphisms of spacetime. Consequently, compared to general relativity, the spectrum contains an extra scalar graviton polarization. Here we investigate the possibility of extending the gauge group by a local U(1) symmetry to "nonrelativistic general covariance." This extended gauge symmetry eliminates the scalar graviton, and forces the coupling constant $\lambda$ in the kinetic term of the minimal formulation to take its relativistic value, $\lambda=1$. The resulting theory exhibits anisotropic scaling at short distances, and reproduces many features of general relativity at long distances.Comment: 41 pages; v2: small clarifications, references adde