Evolution of holographic entanglement entropy after thermal and electromagnetic quenches

We study the evolution and scaling of the entanglement entropy after two types of quenches for a 2 + 1 field theory, using a conjectured holographic technique for its computation. We study a thermal quench, dual to the addition of a shell of uncharged matter to four-dimensional anti-de Sitter (AdS4) spacetime, and study the subsequent formation of a Schwarzschild black hole. We also study an electromagnetic quench, dual to the addition of a shell of charged sources to AdS4, following the subsequent formation of an extremal dyonic black hole. In these backgrounds, we consider the entanglement entropy of two types of geometries, the infinite strip and the round disc, and find distinct behavior for each. Some of our findings naturally supply results analogous to observations made in the literature for lower dimensions, but we also uncover several new phenomena, such as (in some cases) a discontinuity in the time derivative of the entanglement entropy as it nears saturation, and for the electromagnetic quench, a logarithmic growth in the entanglement entropy with time for both the disc and strip, before settling to saturation. We briefly discuss the possible origin of the new phenomena in terms of the features of the conjectured dual field theory. New Journal of Physics 13 (2011) 045017 1367-2630/11/045017+26$33.00 © IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft