The Edge of Entanglement: Getting the Boundary Right for Non-Minimally Coupled Scalar Fields

Abstract

In entanglement computations for a free scalar field with coupling to background curvature, there is a boundary term in the modular Hamiltonian which must be correctly specified in order to get sensible results. We focus here on the entanglement in flat space across a planar interface and (in the case of conformal coupling) other geometries related to this one by Weyl rescaling of the metric. For these "half-space entanglement" computations, we give a new derivation of the boundary term and revisit how it clears up a number of puzzles in the literature, including mass corrections and twist operator dimensions. We also discuss how related boundary terms may show up in other field theories.