On a new type of divergence for spiky Wilson loops and related entanglement entropies

Abstract

We study the divergences of Wilson loops for a contour with a cusp of zero opening angle, combined with a nonzero discontinuity of its curvature. The analysis is performed in lowest order, both for weak and strong coupling. Such a spike contributes a leading divergent term proportional to the inverse of the square root of the cutoff times the jump of the curvature. As nextleading term appears a logarithmic one in the supersymmetric case, but it is absent in QCD. The strong coupling result, obtained from minimal surfaces in AdS via holography, can be used also for applications to entanglement entropy in (2+1)-dimensional CFT's.

Comments: 15 pages, 4 figures, Correction of the prefactor of the leading divergence, appendix B rewritten and related changes in the main text