Numerical determination of the entanglement entropy for a Maxwell field in the cylinder

Abstract

We calculate numerically the logarithmic contribution to the entanglement entropy of a cylindrical region in three spatial dimensions for a Maxwell field. Our result does not agree with the analytical predictions concerning any conformal field theory in four dimensions according to which the coefficient is universal and proportional to the type c conformal anomaly. In cylindrical coordinates the problem decomposes into one dimensional ones along the radial coordinate for each angular momentum. The entanglement entropy of a Maxwell field is equivalent to the one of two identical decoupled scalars with an extra self interaction term.