Holographic entanglement entropy for brane-world higher derivative gravity

A bstract Due to the splitting problem, it is difficult to derive the holographic entanglement entropy for general higher derivative gravity. Inspired by double holography and renormalized entanglement entropy, we develop a method to derive the generalized gravitational entropy for the brane-world higher derivative (BWHD) gravity. Remarkably, this approach is independent of the splitting problem. The so-called BWHD gravity is an effective theory on the brane, given by the counter terms of holographic renormalization. Interestingly, all solutions to Einstein gravity are also solutions to BWHD gravity. We first verify our approach can derive the correct results for curvature-squared gravity and then derive the holographic entanglement entropy for cubic BWHD gravity, which is the main result of this paper. We also derive the entropy of quartic BWHD gravity in flat space with constant extrinsic curvatures and perform several tests on our results. Finally, we briefly comment on our results.