Entanglement entropy of highly degenerate States and fractal dimensions

We consider the bipartite entanglement entropy of ground states of extended quantum systems with a large degeneracy. Often, as when there is a spontaneously broken global Lie group symmetry, basis elements of the lowest-energy space form a natural geometrical structure. For instance, the spins of a spin-1/2 representation, pointing in various directions, form a sphere. We show that for subsystems with a large number m of local degrees of freedom, the entanglement entropy diverges as d/2 logm, where d is the fractal dimension of the subset of basis elements with nonzero coefficients. We interpret this result by seeing d as the (not necessarily integer) number of zero-energy Goldstone bosons describing the ground state. We suggest that this result holds quite generally for largely degenerate ground states, with potential applications to spin glasses and quenched disorder.     

Entanglement entropy for a Dirac fermion in three dimensions: Vertex contribution

In three dimensions there is a logarithmically divergent contribution to the entanglement entropy which is due to the vertices located at the boundary of the region considered. In this work we find the corresponding universal coefficient for a free Dirac field, and extend a previous work in which the scalar case was treated. The problem is equivalent to find the conformal anomaly in three-dimensional space where multiplicative boundary conditions for the field are imposed on a plane angular sector. As an intermediate step of the calculation we compute the trace of the Green function of a massive Dirac field in a two-dimensional sphere with boundary conditions imposed on a segment of a great circle.     

Non-trivial fixed points of the renormalization group in six dimensions

We start a systematic analysis of supersymmetric field theories in six dimensions. We find necessary conditions for the existence of non-trivial interacting fixed points. String theory provides us with examples of such theories. We conjecture that there are many other examples.     

Entanglement evolution in finite dimensions

We provide a relation which describes how the entanglement of two d-level systems evolves as either system undergoes an arbitrary physical process. The dynamics of the entanglement turns out to be of a simple form and is fully captured by a single quantity.     

Entanglement entropy in fermionic Laughlin states

We present analytic and numerical calculations on the bipartite entanglement entropy in fractional quantum Hall states of the fermionic Laughlin sequence. The partitioning of the system is done both by dividing Landau-level orbitals and by grouping the fermions themselves. For the case of orbital partitioning, our results can be related to spatial partitioning, enabling us to extract a topological quantity (the "total quantum dimension") characterizing the Laughlin states. For particle partitioning we prove a very close upper bound for the entanglement entropy of a subset of the particles with the rest, and provide an interpretation in terms of exclusion statistics.     

Entanglement entropy in Abelian gauge theories

The definition of geometric entanglement entropy associated with some region in space is discussed for the case of gauge theories. It is argued that since in gauge theories elementary excitations look like loops (closed electric strings) rather than points (particles), the boundaries of the regions should also carry some nonzero entropy. This entropy counts the number of strings which cross these boundaries. Explicit calculations of such entropy are carried out in the limits of infinitely strong and weak couplings of three- and four-dimensional Z _N gauge theories. In three dimensions we find that the entropy is a constant which does not depend on the region, while in four dimensions the familiar area law for the entropy is recovered.     

Entanglement entropy in extended quantum systems

After a brief introduction to the concept of entanglement in quantum systems, I apply these ideas to many-body systems and show that the von Neumann entropy is an effective way of characterising the entanglement between the degrees of freedom in different regions of space. Close to a quantum phase transition it has universal features which serve as a diagnostic of such phenomena. In the second part I consider the unitary time evolution of such systems following a ‘quantum quench’ in which a parameter in the Hamiltonian is suddenly changed, and argue that finite regions should effectively thermalise at late times, after interesting transient effects.     

Most probable degree distribution at fixed structural entropy

The structural entropy is the entropy of the ensemble of uncorrelated networks with given degree sequence. Here we derive the most probable degree distribution emerging when we distribute stubs (or half-edges) randomly through the nodes of the network by keeping fixed the structural entropy. This degree distribution is found to decay as a Poisson distribution when the entropy is maximized and to have a power-law tail with an exponent γ → 2 when the entropy is minimized.      

Entanglement entropy of round spheres

We propose that the logarithmic term in the entanglement entropy computed in a conformal field theory for a (d−2)$(d-2)$-dimensional round sphere in Minkowski spacetime is identical to the logarithmic term in the entanglement entropy of extreme black hole. The near horizon geometry of the latter is H₂×S_d−2$H_2\times S_{d-2}$. For a scalar field this proposal is checked by direct calculation. We comment on relation of this and earlier calculations to the “brick wall” model of 't Hooft. The case of generic 4d conformal field theory is discussed.     

Entanglement entropy of one-dimensional gases

We introduce a systematic framework to calculate the bipartite entanglement entropy of a spatial subsystem in a one-dimensional quantum gas which can be mapped into a noninteracting fermion system. To show the wide range of applicability of the proposed formalism, we use it for the calculation of the entanglement in the eigenstates of periodic systems, in a gas confined by boundaries or external potentials, in junctions of quantum wires, and in a time-dependent parabolic potential.     

Entanglement entropy converges to classical entropy around periodic orbits

We consider oscillators evolving subject to a periodic driving force that dynamically entangles them, and argue that this gives the linearized evolution around periodic orbits in a general chaotic Hamiltonian dynamical system. We show that the entanglement entropy, after tracing over half of the oscillators, generically asymptotes to linear growth at a rate given by the sum of the positive Lyapunov exponents of the system. These exponents give a classical entropy growth rate, in the sense of Kolmogorov, Sinai and Pesin. We also calculate the dependence of this entropy on linear mixtures of the oscillator Hilbert-space factors, to investigate the dependence of the entanglement entropy on the choice of coarse graining. We find that for almost all choices the asymptotic growth rate is the same.     

Entanglement entropy fluctuations in quantum Ising chains

The behavior of Ising chains with the spin-spin interaction value λ in a transverse magnetic field of constant intensity (h = 1) is considered. For a chain of infinite length, exact analytical formulas are obtained for the second central moment (dispersion) of the entropy operator Ŝ = -lnρ with reduced density matrix ρ, which corresponds to a semi-infinite part of the model chain occurring in the ground state. In the vicinity of a critical point λ_c = 1, the entanglement entropy fluctuation ΔS (defined as the square root of dispersion) diverges as ΔS ∼ [ln(1/|1 − λ|)]^1/2. For the known behavior of the entanglement entropy S, this divergence results in that the relative fluctuation δS = ΔS/S vanishes at the critical point, that is, a state with almost nonfluctuating entanglement is attained.     

Entanglement entropy of critical spin liquids

Quantum spin liquids are phases of matter whose internal structure is not captured by a local order parameter. Particularly intriguing are critical spin liquids, where strongly interacting excitations control low energy properties. Here we calculate their bipartite entanglement entropy that characterizes their quantum structure. In particular we calculate the Renyi entropy S(2) on model wave functions obtained by Gutzwiller projection of a Fermi sea. Although the wave functions are not sign positive, S(2) can be calculated on relatively large systems (>324 spins) using the variational Monte Carlo technique. On the triangular lattice we find that entanglement entropy of the projected Fermi sea state violates the boundary law, with S(2) enhanced by a logarithmic factor. This is an unusual result for a bosonic wave function reflecting the presence of emergent fermions. These techniques can be extended to study a wide class of other phases.     

Entanglement entropy beyond the free case

We present a perturbative method to compute the ground state entanglement entropy for interacting systems. We apply it to a collective model of mutually interacting spins in a magnetic field. At the quantum critical point, the entanglement entropy scales logarithmically with the subsystem size, the system size, and the anisotropy parameter. We determine the corresponding scaling prefactors and evaluate the leading finite-size correction to the entropy. Our analytical predictions are in perfect agreement with numerical results.