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On actions for (entangling) surfaces and DCFTs

Journal of High Energy Physics volume 2018, Article number: 100 (2018) Cite this article

A preprint version of the article is available at arXiv.

Abstract

The dynamics of surfaces and interfaces describe many physical systems, including fluid membranes, entanglement entropy and the coupling of defects to quantum field theories. Based on the formulation of submanifold calculus developed by Carter, we introduce a new variational principle for (entangling) surfaces. This principle captures all diffeomorphism constraints on surface/interface actions and their associated spacetime stress tensor. The different couplings to the geometric tensors appearing in the surface action are interpreted in terms of response coefficients within elasticity theory. An example of a surface action with edges at the two-derivative level is studied, including both the parity-even and parity-odd sectors. Its conformally invariant counterpart restricts the type of conformal anomalies that can appear in two-dimensional submanifolds with boundaries. Analogously to hydrodynamics, it is shown that classification methods can be used to constrain the stress tensor of (entangling) surfaces at a given order in derivatives. This analysis reveals a purely geometric parity-odd contribution to the Young modulus of a thin elastic membrane. Extending this novel variational principle to BCFTs and DCFTs in curved spacetimes allows to obtain the Ward identities for diffeomorphism and Weyl transformations. In this context, we provide a formal derivation of the contact terms in the stress tensor and of the displacement operator for a broad class of actions.

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  1. Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and International Solvay Institutes, Service de Physique Théorique et Mathématique, Campus de la Plaine, CP 231, B-1050, Brussels, Belgium

    Jay Armas & Javier Tarrío

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  1. Jay Armas
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ArXiv ePrint: 1709.06766

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Armas, J., Tarrío, J. On actions for (entangling) surfaces and DCFTs. J. High Energ. Phys. 2018, 100 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP04(2018)100

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Keywords

  • Brane Dynamics in Gauge Theories
  • D-branes
  • p-branes