Extractable entanglement from a Euclidean hourglass

Abstract

We previously proposed that entanglement across a planar surface can be obtained from the partition function on a Euclidean hourglass geometry. Here we extend the prescription to spherical entangling surfaces in conformal field theory. We use the prescription to evaluate log terms in the entropy of a CFT in two dimensions, a conformally-coupled scalar in four dimensions, and a Maxwell field in four dimensions. For Maxwell we reproduce the extractable entropy obtained by Soni and Trivedi. We take this as evidence that the hourglass prescription provides a Euclidean technique for evaluating extractable entropy in quantum field theory.