Prepared for submission to JHEP

UTTG-14-13
TCC-010-13
Holographic entanglement in a noncommutative gauge
theory
Willy Fischler
a,b
, Arnab Kundu
a
, Sandipan Kundu
a,b
a
Theory Group, Department of Physics, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712
b
Texas Cosmology Center, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712
E-mail: [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected]
Abstract: In this article we investigate aspects of entanglement entropy and mutual infor-
mation in a large-N strongly coupled noncommutative gauge theory, both at zero and at nite
temperature. Using the gauge-gravity duality and the Ryu-Takayanagi (RT) prescription, we
adopt a scheme for dening spatial regions on such noncommutative geometries and subse-
quently compute the corresponding entanglement entropy. We observe that for regions which
do not lie entirely in the noncommutative plane, the RT-prescription yields sensible results.
In order to make sense of the divergence structure of the corresponding entanglement entropy,
it is essential to introduce an additional cut-o in the theory. For regions which lie entirely
in the noncommutative plane, the corresponding minimal area surfaces can only be dened at
this cut-o and they have distinctly peculiar properties.
a
r
X
i
v
:
1
3
0
7
.
2
9
3
2
v
2


[
h
e
p
-
t
h
]


2
8

J
a
n

2
0
1
4
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Noncommutative Yang-Mills 4
2.1 Holographic dual 4
2.2 Regime of validity 5
2.3 Noncommutativity and entanglement entropy 5
2.3.1 F(x
1
, x
2
, x
3
) = F(x
1
, x
2
) 6
2.3.2 General case 7
3 Innite rectangular strip 7
3.1 Commutative rectangular strip 7
3.2 Non-commutative rectangular strip 8
3.3 Mutual information 11
4 Introducing Finite temperature 13
4.1 Entanglement entropy of an innite rectangular strip 14
4.2 Mutual information 17
5 More general shapes: commutative cylinder 18
5.1 Entanglement entropy 18
5.2 Mutual information 21
6 More general shapes: noncommutative cylinder 21
7 Conclusions 25
8 Acknowledgements 25
1 Introduction
Noncommutativity is an intriguing concept that has repeatedly appeared in mathematics and
physics. It was realized, perhaps rst in [1], that quantum eld theories can be dened on
a noncommutative geometry where the position coordinates do not commute. Based on a
conventional Lagrangian description, the primary ingredient to dene such a theory is an
associative but not necessarily commutative algebra. Perhaps the most familiar example of
such an algebra is the commutation relation between the space-coordinates
_
x
i
, x
j

= i
ij
, (1.1)
where
ij
is the noncommutativity tensor.
1
Hallmark of a noncommutative theory is the inherent non-locality associated with the
description. One key motivation behind studying such noncommutative theories is that they
come equipped with a natural infra-red (IR) ultraviolet (UV) connection which is a profound
property of any theory of quantum gravity. In string theory noncommutative theories do
appear rather naturally, of which the BFSS[2] and the IKKT[3] matrix theories have been
widely studied in the literature. On the other hand, non-locality posits conceptual challenges
even for simple quantum eld theories. Thus it will be a fruitful exercise to understand the
simple non-local quantum eld theories, which may eventually be relevant for a theory of
quantum gravity.
In the current article we will attempt to investigate aspects of entanglement entropy in
a noncommutative eld theory. We will consider the noncommutative version of the A = 4
super Yang-Mills theory, where we just need to replace every commutative product by the
star-product
(f g)(x) e
i
2

ij
y
i

z
j
f(y)g(z)

y=z=x
, (1.2)
where f(y) and g(z) are two arbitrary functions.
Before proceeding further, let us briey introduce the notion of entanglement entropy. In
a given quantum eld theory dened on a manifold, we imagine an entangling surface that
divides the entire manifold in two sub-manifolds at a given instant in time. Let us denote the
corresponding sub-systems by A and A
c
respectively. Consequently, the total Hilbert space
factorizes: 1
tot
= 1
A
1
A
c. Now we can dene a reduced density matrix for the sub-system
A by tracing over the degrees of freedom in A
c
:
A
= tr
A
c[]. Finally we can use the von
Neumann denition S
A
= tr [
A
log
A
], which denes the entanglement entropy.
The astute reader will immediately notice potential subtleties in dening such a quantity
in a noncommutative eld theory. One obvious issue is how to dene a sharp entangling
surface in a fuzzy manifold, which is also tied to the issue whether in a noncommutative theory
1
tot
= 1
A
1
A
c factorization is sensible. At this point we can appeal to Bohrs correspondence
principle and declare that we can dene an entangling surface provided we promote the classical
algebraic equation dening such a surface as a statement on the corresponding operator and
its eigenvalues.
1
The issue is now to carry out a computation.
We will not attempt to perform a weakly coupled eld theory computation. Instead, we
will make a detour via the AdS/CFT correspondence[4] to analyze the issue in a large N
noncommutative gauge theory. By virtue of the gauge-gravity duality, we will need to perform
a classical gravity computation in a geometric background obtained in [5, 6]. In gauge-gravity
duality, entanglement entropy is calculated using the Ryu-Takayanagi (RT) formula proposed
in [8]. According to this proposal, entanglement entropy of a region A is given by
S
A
=
Area(
A
)
4G
(d+1)
N
, (1.3)
where G
(d+1)
N
is the (d+1)-dimensional Newtons constant,
A
denotes the minimal area surface
whose boundary coincides with the boundary of region A: A =
A
.
1
We have elaborated more on this issue in the following sections.
2
In the case of a noncommutative gauge theory dened on the boundary of the bulk geom-
etry, this raises another subtlety: As we have argued before, A does not necessarily have a
well-dened meaning in a fuzzy geometry. Perhaps the simplest generalization is to make sense
of the boundary curve as an operator, denoted by

A, and dene spatial regions as bounds on
the eigenvalues of this operator.
2
Thus there is no straightforward way to construct an inter-
polating bulk minimal area surface for such a spatial region. We will assume that, since the
bulk geometry is still a classical one, the corresponding minimal area surface with the classical
boundary A, if exists, provides a denition for entanglement entropy. Henceforth we will in-
vestigate this quantity, both at zero and at nite temperature. Perhaps most intriguingly, the
RT-formula as applied within our scheme of the prescription for a subregion residing entirely
on the noncommutative plane does allow us to dene a sensible entanglement. However,
the corresponding minimal area surfaces have rather peculiar properties.
Let us now mull over why entanglement entropy may be a potentially interesting observable
for such a theory. First, note that it is non-trivial to dene a gauge-invariant operator in such
a theory[9] and subsequently it is subtle to compare the corresponding results with an ordinary
theory. Entanglement entropy, modulo the above-mentioned issues, can be an interesting probe
for such theories. In the large temperature limit, entanglement entropy reduces to thermal
entropy which is still a gauge-invariant concept for noncommutative theories. Therefore we
expect that the entanglement entropy is also a gauge-invariant observable. Furthermore, this
exercise may also shed light on the role of an inherent non-locality on quantum entanglement.
It is expected that entanglement entropy obeys a universal area-law[10] for a local eld theory
with nearest neighbour interaction
3
, since quantum entanglement occurs primarily across the
common boundary. In a non-local theory this may not necessarily be true. We will nd in
several examples that there is a violation of the area law below a certain length-scale; however
we will further argue that it may not be meaningful to probe the theory below this scale.
4
The above feature is more prominent in the so called mutual information, which is a
derived quantity that has some advantages over entanglement entropy. Mutual information
between two disjoint, separated sub-systems A and B is dened as
I(A, B) = S
A
+S
B
S
AB
,
where S
Y
denotes the entanglement entropy of the region Y . It can be proved under general
considerations that mutual information is always bounded by the area of the boundary of A
and/or B[12]. It is, however, not immediately clear whether in a gauge theory the analogue of
this theorem can tolerate some non-locality.
5
We will nd that mutual information is always
an area-worth quantity, when it is nite. This area-worth and nite behaviour can be violated
below a certain length scale, where the entanglement entropy also deviates from an area-
law. Furthermore, it undergoes the familiar[13, 14] entanglement/disentanglement transition
as observed in generic large N gauge theories. Perhaps more importantly, we will also show
2
We will discuss this in detail in section 2.3.
3
Note that even for a gauge theory, where the interactions are not nearest neighbour type, such an area law
may hold. Although there is no general proof of this statement.
4
We will discuss this in detail in a later section. For earlier related studies, see [11].
5
We would like to thank Matthew Hastings for correspondences on this issue.
3
that mutual information is the right quantity to compare the results of the noncommutative
theory with the corresponding commutative one.
This article is divided in the following sections: We begin with a brief review of the non-
commutative gauge theory and its holographic dual geometry. Within the same section we
then discuss one possible way to dene sub-regions of various possible shapes on a noncommu-
tative geometry. We then discuss features of entanglement entropy and mutual information for
a rectangular strip geometry both at vanishing and at nite temperature in section 3 and
4 respectively. After this, we discuss some features of entanglement for more general shapes:
a commutative cylinder in section 5 and a noncommutative cylinder in section 6. Finally we
conclude in section 7.
2 Noncommutative Yang-Mills
2.1 Holographic dual
A mild form of non-locality can be realized by considering noncommutative gauge theories.
In this section, we will consider a four-dimensional maximally supersymmetric SU(N) super
Yang-Mills theory on a spacetime R
2

R
1+1
, where noncommutativity parameter is non-zero
only in the R
2

plane. R
2

plane is dened by a Moyal algebra

[x
2
, x
3
] = i . (2.1)
At large N and strong t Hooft coupling, a holographic description of this theory can be given
which, in the string frame, reads[5, 6]
6
ds
2
= R
2
_
u
2
f(u)dt
2
+u
2
dx
2
1
+u
2
h(u)
_
dx
2
2
+dx
2
3
_
+
du
2
u
2
f(u)
+d
2
5
_
, (2.2)
B
23
= R
2
a
2
u
4
h(u) , e
2
= g
2
s
h(u) , (2.3)
F
0123u
=
4R
4
g
s
u
3
h(u) , C
01
=
R
2
a
2
g
s
u
4
. (2.4)
Here R denotes the radius of curvature of the background geometry, x
1
and t represent the
R
1,1
-directions, whereas x
2
, x
3
represents the R
2

-plane. The radial coordinate is denoted by

u; the ultraviolet (boundary) is located at u u
b
, where u
b
is a momentum cut-o that is
taken to be large. Also, g
s
denotes the string coupling which is related to the radius of the
geometry via, R
4
= 4g
s
N
2
, where

is the string tension. Finally, d

2
5
denotes the metric
on an unit 5-sphere.
Note that, the background in (2.2) is also characterized by two functions, denoted by f(u)
and h(u) respectively. These functions are explicitly given by
f(u) = 1
_
u
H
u
_
4
, h(u) =
1
1 +a
4
u
4
. (2.5)
The function f(u) represents the existence of a black hole in the geometry and h(u) bears
the signature that the dual gauge theory is noncommutative. Here u
H
denotes the location of
6
Note that the simplest way to understand why this corresponds to a noncommutative gauge theory is to
consider an open string in the corresponding background, which yields the commutation relation in (2.1)[7].
4
the event horizon and a is related to the noncommutativity parameter through: a =
1/4

,
where is the t Hooft coupling dened as = 4g
s
. The parameter a can be thought of as
the renormalized noncommutativity at strong coupling, since this is the parameter that will
enter in every holographic computation.
Before proceeding further, a few comments are in order: First, note that when there is
no black hole present in the background, i.e. u
H
= 0, the infrared limit of the geometry is
obtained by sending u 0. In this limit, we recover an AdS-space. On the other hand if we
send u
b
, h(u) 0 and thus the geometry degenerates. Hence we need to impose u
b
< .
Also note that the background in (2.2) can be simply obtained by a chain of T-duality
transformations on the familiar AdS-SchwarzschildS
5
-background. The non-trivial B-eld
and the dilaton are generated as a consequence of this chain of duality transformations. Hence
we can view the x
2
, x
3
-directions as a 2-torus T
2

= R
2

/Z
2
. The strict limit of u
b
can
also be viewed as the degeneration of this 2-torus.
2.2 Regime of validity
We can trust the supergravity solution only when the scalar curvature of the background is
small compare to 1/

= 1/l
2
s
, where l
s
is the string length. This leads to the condition
au
b

2

, (2.6)
which is trivially satised for large t Hooft coupling. The UV cut-o u
b
can also be thought
as the momentum cut-o. Another constraint comes from the fact that proper distance as
measured by the metric in (2.2) of a coordinate distance l along R
2

or T
2

is larger than l
s
:
l
a

(u
b
a)
1/2

1/4
. (2.7)
Therefore, if is the short distance cuto then

a

(u
b
a)
1/2

1/4
. (2.8)
Finally, as explained before, we also need to impose the constraint that the R
2

or T
2

as
measured by the metric in (2.2) does not degenerate. To sharpen this constraint, let us
introduce the following dimensionless cut-o
= au
b
. (2.9)
Later we will observe that this cut-o does play an important role in the divergence structure
of entanglement entropy.
2.3 Noncommutativity and entanglement entropy
Let us begin with an elementary discussion of dening regions using entangling surfaces in a
noncommutative geometry. We will consider a (3 +1)-dimensional noncommutative spacetime
of the form R
1,1
R
2

or R
1,1
T
2

. Let us take x
2
and x
3
to be the noncommutative directions.
In analogy with quantum mechanics, we should treat x
2
and x
3
as operators with
[ x
2
, x
3
] = i . (2.10)
5
In the commutative case, an entangling surface can be dened as an algebraic equation
F (x
1
, x
2
, x
3
) = 0 , (2.11)
which denes two sub-regions denoted by A and B respectively
A = (x
1
, x
2
, x
3
) [ F (x
1
, x
2
, x
3
) 0 , (2.12)
B = (x
1
, x
2
, x
3
) [ F (x
1
, x
2
, x
3
) 0 . (2.13)
In the noncommutative case, following the correspondence principle the function F should be
promoted to an operator
F

F( x
1
, x
2
, x
3
) =

F(x
1
, x
2
, x
3
) . (2.14)
The eigenstates of

F(x
1
, x
2
, x
3
) form a complete basis

F(x
1
, x
2
, x
3
)[F = F[F . (2.15)
Now the system can be divided in two sub-regions in a unique way:
A = [F [ F 0 (2.16)
B = [F [ F 0 . (2.17)
For a given function F, this division is unique.
Now, we can ask the following general question: if we choose a function F(x
1
, x
2
, x
3
) on
the boundary and use the bulk geometry to calculate the RT-entropy
S
RT
(F) =
Area(
F
)
4G
(4+1)
N

F
= F , (2.18)
what does it correspond to when the boundary theory is dened on a noncommutative back-
ground?
2.3.1 F(x
1
, x
2
, x
3
) = F(x
1
, x
2
)
This is the simplest case. In this case, the answer is straight forward since the sub-regions have
a boundary A or B that lies entirely in the commutative submanifold: A, B /
com
,
where /
com
R R
2

. In the boundary theory, we should look at

F(x
1
, x
2
). Now,

F and x
2
commute and we can work in the [x
2
basis:

F(x
1
, x
2
)[x
2
= F(x
1
, x
2
)[x
2
. (2.19)
Therefore, the RT-entropy S
RT
(F) gives the geometric entropy between spatial regions A and
B:
A = (x
1
, x
2
) [ F(x
1
, x
2
) 0 (2.20)
B = (x
1
, x
2
) [ F(x
1
, x
2
) 0 . (2.21)
6
2.3.2 General case
When, F is a function of both x
2
and x
3
, then in the boundary theory the function F(x
1
, x
2
, x
3
)
does not have a well-dened meaning since we cannot draw a sharp curve in the fuzzy R
2

-plane.
In the bulk theory however, we still can calculate S
RT
(F) following the usual bulk prescription.
Although an entangling surface cannot be drawn in the general case, for any function
F(x
1
, x
2
, x
3
) in the bulk theory, there is a unique decomposition in the boundary theory:
A = [F [ F 0 (2.22)
B = [F [ F 0 . (2.23)
Thus in this case, the operator

F denes the quantum analogue of an entangling surface. It
is therefore interesting to investigate whether S
RT
(F) is the entanglement entropy between
subsystems A and B: S
RT
(F) = S(A).
3 Innite rectangular strip
In this section we will investigate one particular example for which we can easily perform the
explicit computations. In particular, we will take the innite strip geometry. The background
in (2.2) is written in the string frame, hence we will use the generalized RT-formula for the
10-dimensional geometry with a varying dilation
S
A
=
1
4G
(10)
N
_
d
8
e
2
_
G
(8)
ind
=
/
4G
(5)
N
, (3.1)
where G
(10)
N
= 8
6

4
, parametrizes the worldvolume of the minimal surface and the 5-
dimensional Newtons constant G
(5)
N
is proportional to G
(10)
N
up to a volume factor.
3.1 Commutative rectangular strip
Let us choose
X x
1

l
2
,
l
2
_
, x
2
, x
3

L
2
,
L
2
_
, (3.2)
with L . The extremal surface is translationally invariant along x
2
, x
3
and the area of the
extremal surface (in the Einstein frame) is simply given by
/ =
L
2
R
3
g
2
s
_
duu
3

X
2
+
1
u
4
f(u)
. (3.3)
The above expression coincides with the corresponding expression in a pure AdS-Schwarzschild
background. Hence, the entanglement entropy is the same as that for the A = 4 SYM case.
7
3.2 Non-commutative rectangular strip
We will begin with the case when there is no black hole in the geometry, i.e. by setting f(u) = 1.
Let us now compute the entanglement entropy for an innite strip specied by
X x
2

l
2
,
l
2
_
, x
1
, x
3

L
2
,
L
2
_
. (3.4)
with L . The corresponding extremal surface is translationally invariant along x
1
, x
3
and
the prole of the surface in the bulk is given by X(u). Area of this surface (in the Einstein
frame) is given by
/ =
L
2
R
3
g
2
s
_
duu
3

X
2
+
1
u
4
h(u)
. (3.5)
One crucial comment is in order: The bulk metric in (2.2) is anisotropic in x
2
, x
3
and x
1
-
directions. Naively, it looks like the physical distance along x
2
or x
3
should be l
_
h(u
b
)
at a given cut-o u = u
b
. However, the relevant metric one should use to compute physical
distances is not the bulk metric, but the open-string metric. One can check that the open-
string metric for the background in (2.2) is still AdS and hence the physical distance is the
same as the coordinate distance.
Now we will go ahead and obtain the equation of motion using action (3.5)
dX
du
=
u
3
c
u
5
_
_
1
u
6
c
u
6
_
h(u)
, (3.6)
where, u
c
is an integral of motion and u = u
c
represents the point of closest approach of the
extremal surface. Such surfaces have two branches
7
, joined smoothly at (u = u
c
, X = 0, X

) and u
c
can be determined using the boundary conditions:
X(u
b
) =
l
2
, (3.7)
which leads to
l
2
=
_
u
b
u
c
u
3
c
du
u
5
_
_
1
u
6
c
u
6
_
h(u)
(3.8)
and nally the area functional is
/ =
2L
2
R
3
g
2
s
_
u
b
u
c
udu
_
_
1
u
6
c
u
6
_
h(u)
. (3.9)
This area is divergent and using the UV-cuto u
b
, we can write
/ = /
div
+/
nite
. (3.10)
7
For convenience, we will refer to these as the U-shaped proles. We also note our results here are consistent
with [11].
8
2 4 6 8 10
u
c
5
10
15
20
25
l
a
Figure 1. Variation of l with u
c
for U-shaped proles. The curve has a minimum at u
c
a 0.8,
l
a
1.6.
For
l
a
> 1.6, two U-shaped solutions exist for each l. For
l
a
< 1.6, U-shaped solution does not exist.
For the case in hand we get
/
div
=
2L
2
R
3
a
2
g
2
s
_
u
4
b
4
+
1
2a
4
ln(au
b
)
_
, (3.11)
whereas /
nite
can be calculated from the equation (3.9). But before we proceed, a few
comments are in order. The U-shaped prole exists only for l l
0
1.6a. In fact for l > l
0
,
two U-shaped solutions exist for each l; however the solution with u
c
a < 0.8 has smaller area.
There is another solution to the extremal surface equation: u = u
b
, which does not
penetrate the bulk at all. For this class of solutions, we get the following divergence structure
/
deg
=
L
2
lR
3
u
3
b
g
2
s
. (3.12)
Comparing the leading behaviours in (3.11) and (3.12), we can conclude that the u = u
b
is the
minimum area solution only when l < l
c
, where,
l
c
=
a
2
u
b
2
+
1
a
2
u
3
b
ln(au
b
)
a
2
u
b
2
. (3.13)
Let us now comment on why l < l
c
is not a sensible regime, although the entanglement entropy
for this particular case is still a perfectly well-dened quantity even for l < l
c
. It is well-known
that in a noncommutative theory with noncommutativity parameter and a momentum cut-o
, the transverse (to the momentum) direction stretches to . In our case, the parameter
(a
2
) plays the role of a renormalized noncommutativity parameter and the bulk radial cut-o u
b
plays the role of a momentum cut-o. Thus for a momentum p
3
u
b
along x
3
, the uncertainty
in the transverse direction becomes x
2
a
2
u
b
. Thus for the noncommutative theory at this
energy scale, though formally entanglement entropy is still a well-dened quantity, it does not
make sense to probe below the length scale l
c
a
2
u
b
. Hence existence of u = u
b
solution,
indicates that it is only sensible to consider length scales l > l
c
. Here we should also note that
9
we are interested in the regime u
b
a >> 1 where one can check that l
c
>> l
0
and hence we
always have U-shaped solutions.
From the bulk point of view, the u = u
b
solutions are also rather peculiar. First of all, note
that the corresponding RT-surface does not probe the bulk geometry at all. Moreover, unlike
the other familiar well-dened RT-surfaces, which obey the boundary condition that X

0
as u u
b
, this particular kind of surface obeys X

O() at the boundary. It is important

to note that such solutions, for which X

diverges at the boundary, result in an apparent

volume dependence for entanglement entropy. This subsequently results in a divergent mutual
information. In a later section we will observe a stronger presence of similar behaviour.
Thus we will discard the solutions u = u
b
henceforth.
8
Let us now focus on the divergence
structure obtained in (3.11). Naively, it seems that the entanglement entropy has a quartic
divergence in u
b
, as opposed to the quadratic divergence in the ordinary Yang-Mills case. This
is evidently counter-intuitive. We cannot t more than one degree of freedom inside one Moyal
cell, which implies that, at the very least, noncommutativity should not worsen the divergence
in a quantum eld theory.
We will now argue that there is one way to reconcile with the above expectation. Let us
recall that we introduced a dimensionless cut-o in (2.9). Using this additional cut-o
we can rewrite the divergent piece as
/
div
=
L
2
R
3
2g
2
s

2
u
2
b
+
L
2
R
3
g
2
s
a
2
log , (3.14)
which can be re-interpreted as having a familiar quadratic divergence in u
b
. Evidently this
comes at the cost of having to introduce an additional scheme-dependent quantity . Note
however, that taking a naive a 0 limit does not reproduce the known result for ordinary
Yang-Mills theory. At this level, we can make a curious observation: Given the background in
(2.2), we can rst perform an RT-computation and then take the a 0 limit. Alternatively,
we can also take the a 0 limit and then perform the RT-computation. These two processes
do not yield the same result. This observation holds true for the nite part of the entanglement
entropy as well, which we will discuss now.
We can schematically write the entanglement entropy (l > l
c
) as
S = S
div
+
N
2
2
_
L
2
a
2
_
s
_
l
a
_
. (3.15)
Where s(l/a) is a monotonically increasing nite-valued function of l/a and for l/a , it
approaches s(l/a) 0.5966. Note that, in the ordinary large N Yang-Mills case, the nite part
of the entanglement entropy approaches zero as the length of the rectangular strip asymptotes
to innity. This is clearly not the case here. This again makes the comparison between the
commutative and the ordinary Yang-Mills theories subtle. We will show that this subtlety
is absent in the mutual information. Meanwhile, the functional behaviour of s(l/a) can be
evaluated numerically, which is shown in g. 2.
Before proceeding further in discussing aspects of mutual information, let us ponder over
a key aspect of entanglement entropy in this case. It is straightforward to observe that the
8
In other words, we consider length scales that are greater than l
c
.
10
2 3 4 5 6

0.45
0.50
0.55
s
Figure 2. Variation of s(l/a) with l/a.
divergent piece in (3.11) is independent of the length of the interval l and thus one can dene
a nite quantity derived from the entanglement entropy as follows
C(l) = l
l
S(l/a) =
N
2
2
_
L
2
a
2
_
l
l
s(l/a) . (3.16)
In an (1+1)-dim CFT, this denes a central charge function that can be shown to be monoton-
ically decreasing under an RG-ow[15] and hence measures the number of degrees of freedom:
l
l
C(l) 0. It is straightforward to check that the above inequality is satised by (3.16) since
the curve in g. 2 is a concave one.
In general the above result follows from three criteria: (i) Lorentz invariance, (ii) unitarity
and (iii) strong subadditivity of entanglement entropy. In our construction, the full Lorentz
invariance is broken, SO(3, 1) SO(1, 1) SO(2), where t, x
1
has the SO(1, 1) symmetry
and x
2
, x
3
has the SO(2) symmetry. Thus it is non-trivial that the inequality l
l
C(l) 0 is
still satised, since there is no eective Lorentz symmetry in the t, x
2
-plane to protect it.
3.3 Mutual information
Let us now move on to discuss mutual information. To dene this quantity we need to consider
two rectangular strips each of width l separated by a distance x along the x
2
-direction. For
a visual rendition of the set-up, see g. 3. The corresponding mutual information between the
sub-systems A and B is dened as
I(A, B) = S
A
+S
B
S
AB
, (3.17)
where S
Y
denotes the entanglement entropy of the region Y .
It is demonstrated in g. 3 that for the computation of entanglement entropy of the region
A B, we have two candidates for the corresponding minimal area surface. This gives rise to
11
l l
x
L
d2
A B
l l
x
r
X
B
B A
Figure 3. A diagrammatic representation of the two rectangular strips which are used to analyze the
mutual information. Here X x
2
and r u. Clearly, to compute the entanglement entropy of the
region A B, we have two choices for the minimal area surface.
an interesting phase transition for mutual information, which has been discussed in details
in [14]. Here we will observe a similar physics. In this case mutual information is given by,
9
I(A, B) =
N
2
2
_
L
2
a
2
__
2s
_
l
a
_
s
_
x
a
_
s
_
2l +x
a
__
, x/l , (3.18)
= 0 , x/l > , (3.19)
where depends on the non-commutative parameter a. The corresponding phase diagram
has been shown in g.4(a). Note that approaches the commutative result 0.732 for large
x/a. A couple of comments are in order: First, we note that mutual information again picks
out the nite part of entanglement entropy. Second, it seems possible to recover the results
for ordinary Yang-Mills theory by setting a 0 (see g. 4(b)), which is not the case for
entanglement entropy.
To sharpen the latter statement, let us dene the following quantity
_
I(A, B)
NCYM
I(A, B)
SYM
_
lx,a
, (3.20)
where NCYM stands for non-commutative Yang-Mills and SYM stands for super Yang-
Mills. which we have plotted in gure 5. Since mutual information encodes all possible
correlations, g. 5 implies that noncommutativity introduces more correlations between two
sub-systems of the full system.
9
We consider x, l > l
c
, as we have already mentioned. It can be checked easily that for x and/or l < l
c
,
mutual information is divergent.
12
2 3 4 5 6 7

0.71
0.72
0.73
0.74
0.75

(a)
1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 3.0
x
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
2 IA,Bl
2
N
2
L
2

(b)
Figure 4. Panel (a): 2-dimensional parameter space for the (3+1)-dimensional NCYM boundary
theory. The mutual informational is non-zero only in the blue shaded region. Panel (b): Variation of
I(A, B) with x for l = 4. Blue solid line is for a = 1 and red solid line is for a = 1.2. Dashed black line
shows the corresponding mutual information for the commutative case.
0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6

x
1.00
1.05
1.10
1.15
1.20
I
NCYM
I
SYM
lx,a
Figure 5. Variation of mutual information (at large l limit) with a/x, indicating an increase of
correlations as we increase the noncommutativity of the theory. Also note that in the a 0 we recover
the known result for pure SYM theory.
4 Introducing Finite temperature
We will now discuss the physics at nite temperature. To this end, we will now consider the
geometry in (2.2) with u
H
,= 0. After Euclidean continuation and periodically identifying the
time-direction, the corresponding temperature of the background can be obtained to be
T =
u
H

. (4.1)
13

BOUNDARY

HORIZON

Figure 6. All possible extremal surfaces for an innite rectangular strip. There are four solutions: two
U-shaped (U
1
, U
2
), one parallel (P) and one constant (D) solutions.
Here we will conne ourselves to discuss the rectangular strip geometry that we have been
discussing so far.
4.1 Entanglement entropy of an innite rectangular strip
Before we go ahead and calculate the entanglement entropy of a non-commutative innite
rectangular strip specied by
X x
2

l
2
,
l
2
_
, x
1
, x
3

L
2
,
L
2
_
, L , (4.2)
let us discuss the nature of extremal surfaces for this particular geometric shape. Typically,
for a given length l, there are four solutions (see gure 6). Just like the zero temperature case,
there are two U-shaped solutions (U
1
, U
2
) when l > l
0
(aT).
10
The one that goes deeper into
the bulk has smaller area
/(U
1
) /(U
2
) . (4.3)
10
Presence of the second U-shaped solution probably is the bulk reection of the boundary UV/IR connection.
It is interesting to note that in the limit a 0, solution U
2
approaches the constant solution D. When the
noncommutativity is turned o completely, U
2
coincides with D and we are left with only one U-shaped solution.
14
l
c
0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0
T
5
10
15

0
T
Figure 7. Variation of l
0
(aT) (solid blue curve) with aT. Dashed black line corresponds to some l
c
for
a particular momentum cut-o u
b
. At low temperature l
c
>> l
0
(aT). At suciently high temperature
l
0
(aT) can be larger than l
c
.
For l < l
0
(aT), U-shaped solutions do not exist. It can be shown that at large temperature
(aT >> 1)
l
0
(aT) 2a
2
u
H
= 2a
2
T . (4.4)
Similar to the commutative case, there exists a parallel solution (P) which has larger area
/(U
1
) /(P) (4.5)
and hence it can only be important when l < l
0
(aT). As before, there is also a constant
solution(D): u = u
b
, that does not go inside the bulk at all. This solution becomes important
only when l < l
c
/(D) < /(U
1
), /(U
2
), /(P) , (4.6)
where, we will show later that l
c

1
2
a
2
u
b
does not depend on temperature. As we argued
before, presence of this solution indicates that it does not make sense to probe below l
c
.
From the above discussion, it is clear that we have two length scales: l
0
(aT) and l
c
. At
zero temperature, we saw that l
0
1.6a is a fundamental length scale that comes from the
noncommutative nature of the space-time. Whereas, l
c
is an eective cut-o that appears
only after we introduce a momentum cut-o u
b
. At zero temperature, l
c
is the relevant cut-o
scale because l
c
>> l
0
. However, at high temperature, l
0
(aT) grows linearly with temperature
(4.4) which probably indicates that the space-time becomes fuzzier at nite temperature. It
is possible to have l
0
(aT) > l
c
only at suciently high temperature (T
u
b
4
); this feature
is schematically represented in g. 7. In this regime, there seems to be a second order phase
transition of entanglement entropy at l = l
0
(aT) 2a
2
T from U
1
to P. However, this phase
transition can be an artifact of having temperature T close to the momentum cut o u
b
; this
should be investigated more carefully in future. At temperature T, average momentum along
any direction p
i
T and uncertainty along noncommutative directions become x
2,3
a
2
T.
15
0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0
u
c
2.0
2.5
3.0
3.5
4.0
l
a
Figure 8. Variation of l with u
c
for u-shaped proles at nite temperature. The black curve is for zero
temperature, blue and red lines are for u
h
a = 0.5 and u
h
a = 1 respectively.
Hence one perhaps can argue that this phase transition is physically irrelevant because at very
high temperature (T u
b
) it is not sensible to probe below l l
0
(aT).
Now we will compute the area of the physically relevant U-shaped solutions. Proceeding
as before, at nite temperature we obtain
l
2
=
_

u
c
u
3
c

1 +a
4
u
4
du
u
5
_
_
1
u
6
c
u
6
__
1
u
4
H
u
4
_
, (4.7)
and
/ =
2L
2
R
3
g
2
s
_

u
c
u

1 +a
4
u
4
du
_
_
1
u
6
c
u
6
__
1
u
4
H
u
4
_
. (4.8)
As we mentioned earlier, for any l above some l
0
(au
H
), there are two U-shaped solutions; the
one with smaller value of au
c
corresponds to smaller area. For increasing values of au
H
, l
0
monotonically increases and so does au
c
. This feature is pictorially represented in g. 8.
Now, at nite temperature the divergence structure is slightly dierent:
S
div
=
N
2
2
_
L
2
a
2
__
u
2
b

2
a
2
2
+
_
1 +
4
a
4
T
4
_
ln()
_
, (4.9)
which seems to receive an additional cut-o dependent term at nite temperature. Note that
this is rather unique, since usually nite temperature does not introduce additional cut-o
dependence in ordinary quantum eld theories.
Similar to the zero temperature case, the constant solution(D) becomes important at
smaller value of l with a volume-worth of area
/
deg
=
L
2
lR
3
u
3
b
g
2
s
(4.10)
16
2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0

1
2
3
4
, T
Figure 9. Variation of o(l/a, Ta) with l/a for Ta = 0 (black), Ta =
0.5

(blue), Ta =
0.7

(red), Ta =
1

(brown), Ta =
1.2

(green).
for
l < l
c
=
a
2
u
b
2
+
_
1 +
4
a
4
T
4
a
2
u
3
b
_
ln(au
b
)
a
2
u
b
2
. (4.11)
It is noteworthy that this l
c
does not receive strong contribution coming from the temperature.
As argued before, we will discard such solutions. For l > l
c
(and l
0
), we get
S =
N
2
2
_
L
2
a
2
__
u
2
b

2
2
+
_
1 +
4
a
4
T
4
_
ln()
_
+
N
2
2
_
L
2
a
2
_
o
_
l
a
, Ta
_
, (4.12)
where o is the nite part, which is pictorially represented in g. 9. For large lT the nite
part of the entanglement entropy becomes linear in l, exactly like the commutative case. That
means at large lT, the leading nite part of the entanglement entropy follows a volume law.
At high temperatures, the most dominant contribution to the nite part of the entanglement
entropy is expected to come from the near horizon part of the extremal surface [16], and it is
given by
o

2
N
2
2
V T
3
. (4.13)
which is independent of the noncommutativity parameter a.
4.2 Mutual information
Once again mutual information can be easily obtained from the entanglement entropy and for
the conguration shown in gure 3 it is given by
I(A, B) =
N
2
2
_
L
2
a
2
__
2o
_
l
a
, Ta
_
o
_
x
a
, Ta
_
o
_
2l +x
a
, Ta
__
, x/l
T
,
= 0 , x/l >
T
, (4.14)
17
1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 3.0
x
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
1.2
2 IA,Bl
2
N
2
L
2

Figure 10. Variation of I(A, B) with x for l = 4 and a = 1 for dierent temperatures. Blue solid line
is for T =
0.1

, brown line is for T =

0.15

and red solid line is for T =

0.2

. Dashed black line shows the

mutual information at T = 0.
where
T
depends on the noncommutative parameter a and temperature T.
11
In g. 10
we have pictorially shown how mutual information behaves. As in the the case of vanishing
temperature, above the length-scale l
c
mutual information is again a well-dened nite quantity
which yields the ordinary Yang-Mills result in the limit a 0. Mutual information undergoes
the expected[14] disentangling transition and the corresponding phase diagram is shown in
g. 11. As expected, we observe that a non-zero value of a results in a larger region in the
phase space where mutual information is non-zero.
5 More general shapes: commutative cylinder
So far we have studied the simplest geometry, namely the innite rectangular strip. The
primary reason for this is technical simplicity. However, to gain intuition one needs to consider
more general shapes as we will see below. However, many of the explicit computations become
involved in such cases and we will not attempt a thorough analysis. Rather, we will focus on
some qualitative features henceforth. For these purposes, we will consider the background at
vanishing temperature.
5.1 Entanglement entropy
Let us begin by considering a cylinder: a circle with radius r in x
1
x
2
plane and length L
along x
3
and in the limit L :
x
1
=
_
r
2
x
2
2
. (5.1)
11
We have assumed that l, x > l
c
and T << u
b
. One can again check that for x and/or l < l
c
, mutual
information is divergent.
18
0.05 0.10 0.15
T x
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
x
l
Figure 11. 2-dimensional parameter space for the (3+1)-dimensional boundary theory. Mutual infor-
mational is non-zero only in the shaded region. Mutual information is non-zero for the region below the
black curve for the commutative case and below the red curve for the noncommutative case (
a
x
=
1
2
).
Note that the above curve falls under the general category discussed in (2.19). The minimal
area surface can be parametrized by x
1
(u, x
2
)
12
. Near the boundary, the extremal surface can
be written in the following form:
F(u, x) x
1
(u, x
2
) =
_
r
2
x
2
+F
1
(u, x) , (5.2)
with F
1
(u
b
, x) 0. The area functional is given by:
/ =
R
3
L
g
2
s
_
ududx

1 + (a
4
u
4
+ 1)
_
F(u, x)
x
_
2
+u
4
_
F(u, x)
u
_
2
. (5.3)
Corresponding equation of motion is given by
u
_
a
4
u
4
+ 1
_

x
_
1
L
0
F(u, x)
x
_
+

u
_
u
5
L
0
F(u, x)
u
_
= 0 , (5.4)
where
L
0
=

1 + (a
4
u
4
+ 1)
_
F(u, x)
x
_
2
+u
4
_
F(u, x)
u
_
2
. (5.5)
The solution near the boundary is given by:
x
1
(u, x
2
) = F(u, x) =
_
r
2
x
2

r
2
log(ua)
2u
2
x
2

r
2
x
2
+... (5.6)
12
For our purposes, it is particularly convenient to consider Cartesian coordinates. In the bulk geometry
given in (2.2) representing a circle in the {x
1
, x
2
}-plane using a polar coordinate is inconvenient, since there is
a non-trivial warp factor h(u).
19
2 1 1 2
x
1
2
1
1
2
x
2
Figure 12. Behavior of the extremal surface for the commutative cylinder near the boundary. Radius
of the cylinder is ra = 2 at the boundary (black curve). The red curve is at ua = 5 and blue curve is
for ua = 2.
The sub-leading piece of the solution is a consequence of the fact that the bulk metric is
anisotropic. Near the boundary the extremal surface can be represented as (see gure 12)
x
2
2

_
(r
2
x
2
1
)
2

2r
2
log(ua)
u
2
= 0 . (5.7)
The curve above clearly demonstrates that the circle gets squashed along the x
1
-direction as
we move along the bulk radial direction.
To obtain the corresponding entanglement entropy, we need to solve the equation in (5.4)
numerically. Here we will not attempt so, instead let us focus on the divergence structure
of the entanglement entropy which can be deduced from the leading order solution near the
boundary. The divergent part of the entanglement entropy is given by
13
S(A)
div
=
N
2
L
2
_

2
ru
2
b
+

2
r
(c
1
+c
2
ln()) +c
3
r
a
2
ln()
_
. (5.8)
13
At nite temperature, similar to the innite strip case, there will be an additional cut-o dependent term
N
2
a
2
T
4
Lr ln .
20
As we have argued before, the corresponding minimal area surface should have less area than
a degenerate surface at u = u
b
14
with area
N
2
L
2
u
3
b
r
2
. This constraint sets a lower bound
for the value for the radius of the cylinder
r
1

a
2
u
b
=
2

l
c
= r
c
. (5.9)
This is reminiscent of the similar constraint we encountered earlier for the rectangular strip.
5.2 Mutual information
Here we will merely argue that mutual information is still a well-dened, nite and cut-o
independent quantity above a minimal length-scale O(r
c
). We can consider the case of three
concentric circles of various radii and consider the two sub-regions as:
Region A = (x
1
, x
2
) [ x
2
1
+x
2
2
r
2
1
, (5.10)
Region B = (x
1
, x
2
) [ r
2
2
x
2
1
+x
2
2
r
2
3
, (5.11)
where r
1
< r
2
< r
3
. In this case, the computation of S(A B) will be more involved since
there are many candidate minimal area surfaces. However, it is easy to check that just like the
A = 4 SYM case:
S(A B)[
div
= S(A)[
div
+S(B)[
div
, (5.12)
and hence
I(A, B) = nite . (5.13)
Thus it is again possible to construct a well-dened quantity derived from the entanglement
entropy as evaluated using the RT-formula.
6 More general shapes: noncommutative cylinder
Now let us discuss potentially a more intriguing case. Let us consider constructing a circle in
the x
2
, x
3
-plane and dene the region A by
A = (x
2
, x
3
) [ x
2
2
+x
2
3
r
2
. (6.1)
We also imagine that x
1
[L/2, L/2] with L . Note that this case falls under the
category where we pretend to draw a sharp curve in the otherwise fuzzy plane to investigate
what the classical bulk RT-surface yields.
To proceed we dene the corresponding polar coordinate in the plane via: dx
2
2
+ dx
2
3
=
d
2
+
2
d
2
. The bulk interpolating minimal area surface can now be parametrized by (u).
With this, the area functional is given by
/ =
2R
3
L
g
2
s
_
u
3
(u)du

(u)
2
+
1
u
4
h(u)
, (6.2)
14
Note that u = u
b
is not an exact solution of (5.4). We are taking this surface to estimate a possible lower
bound on r.
21
BOUNDARY
0 2 4 6 8 12 14

10
5
5
10
u

Figure 13. Extremal surfaces for the noncommutative cylinder for dierent r for u
b
a = 10. The black
line corresponds to the leading behavior of the critical solution (6.6) and all the other U-shaped solutions
asymptotically approach this solution as (u
b
a) is taken to innity. The vertical red line denotes the
location of the boundary.
which yields the following equation of motion
d
du
_
u
3
(u)

(u)
/
0
_
= u
3
/
0
, (6.3)
where
/
0
=

(u)
2
+
1
u
4
h(u)
. (6.4)
Now it can be checked that
(u) = r +g(u) with g(ua ) 0 (6.5)
is not a solution, indicating there is no well-behaved solution for this case. Note that, had such
a solution existed, it would mean

(u)/a
2
<< 1 at the boundary which is the hallmark of a
well-behaved solution.
To investigate this case further we will nd out the best possible solution to the equation of
motion (6.3) that does not satisfy the condition (6.5). This means that we allow

/a
2
O(1)
at the boundary.
15
With this condition, it can be shown that near the boundary (ua >> 1)
15
Note that

/a
2
is a dimensionless quantity.
22
one solution of the equation of motion (6.3) behaves in the following way:

c
(u) =
a
2

3
u
_
1 +
1
2a
4
u
4

1
8a
8
u
8
+O
_
1
a
12
u
12
__
, (6.6)
Now imposing the boundary condition (u
b
) = r, for this solution we obtain
r
c
=
a
2

3
u
b
. (6.7)
This solution yields the following divergence
S(A)[
div
= N
2
L
_
2a
4
u
5
b
15
+
u
b
3
_
= N
2
L
_
2r
2
c
u
3
b
5
+
u
b
3
_
. (6.8)
It looks like the entanglement entropy in this case has a volume divergence and is reminiscent
of the volume divergence that we have encountered before while considering the rectangular
strip or the commutative cylinder geometries earlier.
There are other U-shaped solutions for this case; we have showed them in gure 13. These
numerical solutions are obtained by solving the equation (6.3) with boundary conditions:
(u
b
) = r and (u
c
) = 0 ,

(u
c
) , (6.9)
where, u = u
c
is the closest approach point that depends on the radius r. One can check that
for all these solutions at the boundary

(u) O(a
2
) .
Note that we have previously encountered solutions with the following boundary be-
haviours: (i) X

0 or (ii) X

as u u
b
, where X(u) represents the prole of the
minimal area surface. For the class of solutions in (i), we obtain a familiar area-law behaviour
for entanglement entropy and a nite mutual information. On the other hand, the degener-
ate minimal area surfaces in (ii), e.g. the ones given by u = u
b
that do not probe the bulk
geometry at all, result in divergent mutual information. The physics is qualitatively dierent
for the noncommutative cylinder and the minimal area surfaces with the boundary behaviour

(u) O(a
2
), probe the bulk geometry.
It is important to note that the solution in (6.6) is an attractor to all these solutions
and hence in the limit u
b
a all solutions correspond to the same radius in the boundary.
Therefore, to make sense of the calculation of entanglement entropy and to allow ourselves to
have various values of the radius, it is essential to introduce a cut-o u
b
a = , which is large
( >> 1) but nite.
It is interesting to check the behavior of leading divergence for the U-shaped solutions. An
analytic answer is no longer available; hence we have used numerical techniques to investigate
the issue (see plot 14). From gure 14, it is clear that there is a transition at r = r
c
. For
r > r
c
, we recover the familiar area law
S(A)[
div
=
2

3
5
N
2
L
_
q(ra)
2
ru
2
b
+ sub-leading terms

, r > r
c
, (6.10)
where q(ra) is an O(1) function of r and it can be shown that q(r
c
a) = 1 and q(ra ) 1.08.
For r < r
c
, gure 14 indicates a volume divergence,
S(A)[
div
N
2
L
_
p(ra)
2r
2
u
3
b
5
+ sub-leading terms
_
, r < r
c
, (6.11)
23
5 10 15 20 25 30
r
0.7
0.8
0.9
1.0
5 S A
2 3 N
2
L
2
r u
b
4
Figure 14. Variation of entanglement entropy S(A) for the noncommutative cylinder with ra for
u
b
a = 10. For r > r
c
,
5S(A)
2

3N
2
Lu
4
b
a
2
r
1, indicating an area law behavior.
where p(ra) is another O(1) function of r. The divergence structure heavily depends on

(u)
at the boundary. Solution
c
(u) in (6.6) is a critical solution with

(u) = a
2
/

3; for r < r
c
,

(u
b
) > a
2
/

3 (see gure 13) and we have a volume divergence. This is also reminiscent of
the volume behavior that we have encountered before. For r > r
c
when

(u
b
) < a
2
/

3 and
we recover an area law for entanglement entropy. Interestingly, it can also be checked that for
large r
S(A)[
cylnoncom
S(A)[
cylcom
=
4

3q(ra)
5
> 1 , (6.12)
which implies that there is more entanglement for the noncommutative cylinder.
Before we conclude, a few comments are in order: let us try to connect these results with
the discussion of section 2.3 where

F(x
1
, x
2
, x
3
) = x
2
2
+ x
2
3
r
2
(6.13)
with eigenvalues F
n
= (n +
1
2
)a
2
r
2
.
16
Thus, entanglement entropy S(r) obtained by tracing
out all [F
n
with F
n
> 0 should be a step function of r with step size r a
2
/2r. However,
RT-prescription provides us with an entanglement entropy S(r) which is a continuous function
of r because the relevant length scale for these calculations is r u
b
a
2
and hence (r/r) 1.
It is extremely dicult to compute mutual information on this noncommutative plane;
however, strong dependence of the divergent part of the entanglement entropy on

(u) indi-
cates that mutual information dened in the usual way, may not yield a cut-o independent
behaviour even above r = r
c
.
16
Note that in our case, the parameter a
2
plays the role of renormalized noncommutivity parameter.
24
7 Conclusions
In this article we investigated aspects of quantum entanglement in a large N noncommutative
gauge theory using the AdS/CFT correspondence. We observed that the RT-formula allows us
to obtain well-dened entanglement observables for a class of regions, which do not completely
lie on the noncommutative plane. This comes at the cost of introducing an additional cut-
o, which in the bulk geometry is realized as the degeneration of the noncommutative torus.
The corresponding leading divergence structure in entanglement entropy is not altered by
noncommutativity.
We have also observed that the role of this additional cut-o is more crucial if we want
to dene entanglement entropy, via the RT-prescription, for a region residing entirely on the
noncommutative plane. In this case, the corresponding minimal area surfaces have distinctly
peculiar properties, which may lead to a volume-law behaviour for entanglement entropy and
also result in a divergent mutual information. It is interesting to note that if the violation of
an area-law stems from the inherent non-locality of the theory, it is not clear why this violation
is necessarily of volume-worth, rather than anything else bigger than the area.
Let us also note that in the large N limit the noncommutative Yang-Mills theory does not
dier from the ordinary Yang-Mills one for a number of observables, e.g. the thermodynamics
is identical in both cases[17]. This stems from the general result obtained in [18], which states
that all planar Feynman diagrams in a noncommutative Yang-Mills and an ordinary Yang-
Mills theory are the same, unless there is an external momentum. In this article we have
observed that entanglement entropy, as obtained using RT-formula actually receives a non-
trivial contribution from the noncommutativity even at large N and thus falls outside the
class of observables for which the result in [18] holds. In the large temperature limit, however,
we do recover the thermal entropy as expected.
There are various directions for future explorations. In this article we have only focussed
on the divergent part of entanglement entropy for general shapes of the sub-regions. It will
be interesting to analyze and understand the nite part of the entanglement entropy for such
regions. For the rectangular strip, it will also be interesting to explore the possible second
order phase transition of entanglement entropy at nite temperature, which we alluded to in
section 4.
Let us conclude by saying that our analysis here does not involve any perturbative eld
theoretic computation. It will be interesting to consider analyzing entanglement entropy in a
weakly coupled noncommutative eld theory, or in a more elementary quantum mechanical set-
up. It is well-known that noncommutative theories do play an important role in understanding
physical phenomenon, such as the Quantum Hall Eect[19]. Thus it may also be of direct
physical relevance to entertain such questions, even though we may not learn anything directly
related to issues in quantum gravity. We leave these issues for future explorations.
8 Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Elena Caceres, Jacques Distler, Matthew Hastings, Matthew Headrick,
Juan Maldacena, Shiraz Minwalla and Mark van Raamsdonk for useful conversations and
25
correspondences. AK would also like to thank the hospitality of the ICTS, Bangalore during
the nal stages of this work. This material is based on work supported by the National
Science Foundation under Grant Number PHY-0906020 and by Texas Cosmology Center, which
is supported by the College of Natural Sciences and the Department of Astronomy at the
University of Texas at Austin and the McDonald Observatory. AK is also supported by a
Simons postdoctoral fellowship awarded by the Simons Foundation.
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