A Modified Cosmic Brane Proposal for Holographic Renyi Entropy

Abstract

We propose a new formula for computing holographic Renyi entropies in the presence of multiple extremal surfaces. Our proposal is based on computing the wave function in the basis of fixed-area states and assuming a diagonal approximation for the Renyi entropy. For Renyi index $n\geq1$, our proposal agrees with the existing cosmic brane proposal for holographic Renyi entropy. For $n<1$, however, our proposal predicts a new phase with leading order (in Newton's constant $G$) corrections to the cosmic brane proposal, even far from entanglement phase transitions and when bulk quantum corrections are unimportant. Recast in terms of optimization over fixed-area states, the difference between the two proposals can be understood to come from the order of optimization: for $n<1$, the cosmic brane proposal is a minimax prescription whereas our proposal is a maximin prescription. We demonstrate the presence of such leading order corrections using illustrative examples. In particular, our proposal reproduces existing results in the literature for the PSSY model and high-energy eigenstates, providing a universal explanation for previously found leading order corrections to the $n<1$ Renyi entropies.