Holographic entanglement entropy and c-functions in conformal and confining backgrounds

Abstract: In this work we investigate holographic spacelike and timelike entanglement entropy using the Ryu-Takayanagi prescription, for slab-shaped and ball-shaped entangling regions. We work with an infinite family of 10-dimensional Type IIB supergravity solutions, which are gravity duals to an infinite set of linear quiver theories, with the backgrounds defined using the electrostatic potential formalism for brane configurations. The dual theories are 4-dimensional confining theories at low energy, but decompactify and flow to 5-dimensional SCFTs in the UV. We find that the entanglement entropy exhibits phase transition behaviour, and we use our results to investigate proposed c-functions constructed from the entanglement entropy. Comparing with the flow central charge, another proposed c-function, we find that each displays good behaviour, and reflects both UV and IR features of the dual theory.