We compute directly the entanglement entropy of spatial regions in Chern-Simons gauge theories in 2+1 dimensions using surgery. We use these results to determine the universal topological piece of the entanglement entropy for Abelian and non-Abelian quantum Hall fluids.
We review our recent work on the glueball spectrum of pure Yang-Mills theory in 2+1 dimensions. The calculations make use of Karabali-Nair corner variables in the Hamiltonian formalism, and involve a determination of the leading form of the ground-state wavefunctional.
