### PhD Dissertation Defense

Tuesday, April 20, 2021
1:30pm – 3:30pm

Storrs Campus
Video meeting

Graduate Student Candost Akkaya, Department of Physics, University of Connecticut

Entanglement Entropy in Gauge Theories

Studying long range correlations in non-abelian gauge theories is important to understand the interaction between charged states in their non-perturbative regime. One can study the entanglement properties of these theories to probe their long range structure. However, calculating entanglement entropy is a complicated endeavor and even in free theories since the calculation raises various technical difficulties. We present a way to study the entanglement properties of field theories in their continuum limit by considering the theory of free photon in 3+1 dimensions with a bipartition of local degrees of freedom by a plane. We calculate the entanglement entropy by integrating over the degrees of freedom in one half space using an approximation that assumes slow variation of the magnetic fields in the longitudinal direction. We discuss the differences in the contribution of longitudinal and transverse modes and conclude that the long range entanglement arises due to the necessity to solve the no-monopole constraint condition for the magnetic field.

Contact:

Prof. A. Kovner

Physics Department (primary), College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, UConn Master Calendar