Explicit Entropic Proofs of Irreversibility Theorems for Holographic RG Flows

Abstract: We revisit the existence of monotonic quantities along renormalization group flows using only the Null Energy Condition and the Ryu-Takayanagi formula for the entanglement entropy of field theories with anti-de Sitter gravity duals. In particular, we consider flows within the same dimension and holographically reprove the $c$-, $F$-, and $a$-theorems in dimensions two, three, and four. We focus on the family of maximally spherical entangling surfaces, define a quasi-constant of motion corresponding to the breaking of conformal invariance, and use a properly defined distance between minimal surfaces to construct a holographic $c$-function that is monotonic along the flow. We then apply our method to the case of flows across dimensions: There, we reprove the monotonicity of flows from $\mathrm{AdS}_{D+1}$ to $\mathrm{AdS}_3$ and prove the novel case of flows from $\mathrm{AdS}_5$ to $\mathrm{AdS}_4$.