Studies of Boundary Entropy in AdS/BCFT

Abstract: In this paper we review the AdS/BCFT proposal of T. Takayanagi for holographic description of systems with boundaries, in particular, boundary conformal field theories (BCFTs). Motivated by better understanding of the proposed duality we employ entanglement entropy as a probe of familiar properties of impurities and defects. Using the dual gravity description, we check that in two spacetime dimensions the impurity entropy does not depend on a particular state of the theory, which is a well-known CFT result. In three dimensions different, and not necessarily equivalent, definitions of the defect entropy can be given. We compute the entanglement entropy of a line defect at finite temperature and compare it with earlier calculations of the thermodynamical entropy. The results indicate that the entanglement entropy flows to the definition of the entropy as the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy associated to a portion of the black horizon, which we call impurity "shadow". Geometric configurations, which we discuss, provide examples of RG flows of the defect entropies. We outline the connection between the geometric picture of the RG flows and examples of lattice calculations. We also discuss some new generalizations of the AdS/BCFT geometries.