Wald entropy and Wen-Zee type gauge-curvature coupling in 2+1-dimensional gravity
Abstract
The Wen-Zee term is a mixed gauge-curvature coupling in the topological Chern-Simons description of a quantum Hall fluid, encoding the electric charge bound to spatial curvature. We investigate a Lorentz-covariant generalization of this coupling, expanding its scope to black-hole spacetimes and determine its contribution to horizon entropy. Such a coupling arises naturally in three-dimensional Chern-Simons gravity based on the Maxwell algebra. We show that its Wald entropy contribution is a horizon boost charge, given by a loop integral of the additional gauge field projected along the tangent to the bifurcation circle. This contribution can be nonzero even when the mixed term vanishes on shell. We show that the integral admits an Abelian holonomy interpretation when the projection direction is covariantly constant. We evaluate the charge on a flat cosmological solution and, using smooth horizon fields and a specified thermal ensemble, on an AdS-Lorentz black hole. These results connect the geometric response familiar from quantum Hall physics to gravitational horizon thermodynamics.
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BibTeX
@misc{bhatia2026wald,
title = {{Wald entropy and Wen-Zee type gauge-curvature coupling in 2+1-dimensional gravity}},
author = {Aryan Bhatia and Giandomenico Palumbo and Suraj S. Hegde},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.04476},
eprint = {2610.04476},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.04476},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Wald entropy and Wen-Zee type gauge-curvature coupling in 2+1-dimensional gravity
AU - Aryan Bhatia
AU - Giandomenico Palumbo
AU - Suraj S. Hegde
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/29
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.04476
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.04476
AB - The Wen-Zee term is a mixed gauge-curvature coupling in the topological Chern-Simons description of a quantum Hall fluid, encoding the electric charge bound to spatial curvature. We investigate a Lorentz-covariant generalization of this coupling, expanding its scope to black-hole spacetimes and determine its contribution to horizon entropy. Such a coupling arises naturally in three-dimensional Chern-Simons gravity based on the Maxwell algebra. We show that its Wald entropy contribution is a horizon boost charge, given by a loop integral of the additional gauge field projected along the tangent to the bifurcation circle. This contribution can be nonzero even when the mixed term vanishes on shell. We show that the integral admits an Abelian holonomy interpretation when the projection direction is covariantly constant. We evaluate the charge on a flat cosmological solution and, using smooth horizon fields and a specified thermal ensemble, on an AdS-Lorentz black hole. These results connect the geometric response familiar from quantum Hall physics to gravitational horizon thermodynamics.
ER -