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Towards a $C$-theorem in defect CFT

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arxiv 1810.06995 v2 pith:GMPZ2L32 submitted 2018-10-16 hep-th cond-mat.stat-mech

classification hep-thcond-mat.stat-mech
keywords defectspheredefectsenergyfreetheoremconformaldcfts
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
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abstract

We explore a $C$-theorem in defect conformal field theories (DCFTs) that unify all the known conjectures and theorems until now. We examine as a candidate $C$-function the additional contributions from conformal defects to the sphere free energy and the entanglement entropy across a sphere in a number of examples including holographic models. We find the two quantities are equivalent, when suitably regularized, for codimension-one defects (or boundaries), but differ by a universal constant term otherwise. Moreover, we find in a few field theoretic examples that the sphere free energy decreases but the entanglement entropy increases along a certain renormalization group (RG) flow triggered by a defect localized perturbation which is assumed to have a trivial IR fixed point without defects. We hence propose a $C$-theorem in DCFTs stating that the increment of the regularized sphere free energy due to the defect does not increase under any defect RG flow. We also provide a proof of our proposal in several holographic models of defect RG flows.

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Cited by 10 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

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