Boundary Fluctuations and A Reduction Entropy

Abstract

The boundary Weyl anomalies live on a codimension-1 boundary, $\partial {\cal M}$. The entanglement entropy originates from infinite correlations on both sides of a codimension-2 surface, $\Sigma$. Motivated to have a further understanding of the boundary effects, we introduce a notion of reduction entropy, which, guided by thermodynamics, is a combination of the boundary effective action and the boundary stress tensor defined by allowing the metric on $\partial {\cal M}$ to fluctuate. We discuss how a reduction might be performed so that the reduction entropy reproduces the entanglement structure.