Entanglement entropy in Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity with matter

Abstract: In this paper, I study the entanglement entropy in Hartle-Hawking states of JT gravity set up by a Euclidean path integral with an operator inserted somewhere along the Euclidean boundary. I show that the entanglement entropy between the dual SYK models can be written to leading order in $1/G_N$ in a way that resembles a formula for entanglement entropy in a compact lattice gauge theory, but where the link that we appear to compute the entanglement across depends on where we put the operator along the Euclidean boundary. I then describe a toy model where we can write down an explicit family of density matrices whose von Neumann entropies exhibit such a phase transition as we tune an interpolating parameter. This behavior relies on a certain superselection sector structure and I comment on the possibility that the gravitational result comes from a similar emergent superselection sector structure in SYK/JT holography. The main implication is that each copy of the SYK model should then contain Hilbert space sectors labeled by multiple $SL(2,R)$ representations whose entanglement gives rise to space.