Abstract

We derive a covariant expression for the renormalized holographic entanglement entropy for conformal field theories (CFTs) dual to quadratic curvature gravity in arbitrary dimensions. This expression is written as the sum of the bare entanglement entropy functional obtained using standard conical defect techniques, and a counterterm defined at the boundary of the external surface of the functional. The latter corresponds to the cod-2 self-replicating part of the extrinsic counterterms when evaluated on the replica orbifold. This renormalization method isolates the universal terms of the holographic entanglement entropy functional. We use it to compute the standard C-function candidate for CFTs of arbitrary dimension, and the type-B anomaly coefficient c for four-dimensional CFTs.