Entanglement entropy, holography and gravity

Abstract

In this thesis we review how entanglement entropy is related to the gravitational equations of motion by means of the AdS/CFT correspondence. We consider the entanglement entropy of a ball-shaped spatial region in the CFT vacuum and derive a holographic relation between the relative entropy and the equations of motion in the dual bulk spacetime. For small perturbations around the CFT vacuum, we show that the first law of entanglement entropy requires the dual metric to satisfy the linearized Einstein equation when the entanglement entropy is given by the area of an extremal surface in the bulk. We discuss a recent paper in which the complete Einstein equation is derived and explain why we believe this result is incomplete. This thesis serves both as a commentary on this paper, as well as a detailed review of the relationship between entanglement and gravity.