Left-Right Entanglement Entropy of Dp-branes

Abstract

We compute the left-right entanglement entropy for Dp-branes in string theory. We employ the CFT approach to string theory Dp-branes, in particular, its presentation as coherent states of the closed string sector. The entanglement entropy is computed as the von Neumann entropy for a density matrix resulting from integration over the left-moving degrees of freedom. We discuss various crucial ambiguities related to sums over spin structures and argue that different choices capture different physics; however, we advance a themodynamic argument that seems to favor a particular choice of replica. We also consider Dp branes on compact dimensions and verify that the effects of T-duality act covariantly on the Dp brane entanglement entropy. We find that generically the left-right entanglement entropy provides a suitable generalization of boundary entropy and of the D-brane tension.