An analytic approach for holographic entanglement entropy at (quantum) criticality

Abstract

We consider holographic entanglement entropy in AdS black hole backgrounds by using the limit of large number of dimensions. By dividing the geometry to two patches (with one patch covering the vicinity of the black hole horizon and another covering the other regions), we are able to obtain fully analytic expressions for the entropy when the entanglement region is a strip. We argue that apart from conformal field theories at finite temperature in high number of dimensions, our method works for nearly critical theories in 3+1 dimensions. In the case of extremal black holes, dual to quantum critical systems, the results take a particularly simple form. We also comment on the case of soliton geometries. Finally, we analyze entanglement entropy for wide strips, and propose a general formula for the first subleading term in the expansion of the entropy in (inverse) system size for generic entanglement regions.