Topological Entanglement Entropy from the Holographic Partition Function

Abstract

We study the entropy of chiral 2+1-dimensional topological phases, where there are both gapped bulk excitations and gapless edge modes. We show how the entanglement entropy of both types of excitations can be encoded in a single partition function. This partition function is holographic because it can be expressed entirely in terms of the conformal field theory describing the edge modes. We give a general expression for the holographic partition function, and discuss several examples in depth, including abelian and non-abelian fractional quantum Hall states, and p+ip superconductors. We extend these results to include a point contact allowing tunneling between two points on the edge, which causes thermodynamic entropy associated with the point contact to be lost with decreasing temperature. Such a perturbation effectively breaks the system in two, and we can identify the thermodynamic entropy loss with the loss of the edge entanglement entropy. From these results, we obtain a simple interpretation of the non-integer `ground state degeneracy' which is obtained in 1+1-dimensional quantum impurity problems: its logarithm is a 2+1-dimensional topological entanglement entropy.