We present exact results on the exactly solvable spin chain of Bravyi et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 207202 (2012)]. This model is a spin one chain and has a Hamiltonian that is local and translationally invariant in the bulk. It has a unique (frustration free) ground state with an energy gap that is polynomially small in the system’s size (2n). The half-chain entanglement entropy of the ground state is 12logn+const.[Bravyi et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 207202 (2012)]. Here we first write the Hamiltonian in the standard spin-basis representation. We prove that at zero temperature, the magnetization is along the z-direction, i.e., ⟨sx⟩=⟨sy⟩=0 (everywhere on the chain). We then analytically calculate ⟨sz⟩ and the two-point correlation functions of sz. By analytically diagonalizing the reduced density matrices, we calculate the Schmidt rank, von Neumann, and Rényi entanglement entropies for the following: 1. Any partition of the chain into two pieces (not necessarily in the middle) and 2. L consecutive spins centered in the middle. Further, we identify entanglement Hamiltonians (Eqs. (49) and (59)). We prove a small lemma (Lemma (1)) on the combinatorics of lattice paths using the reflection principle to relate and calculate the Motzkin walk “height” to spin expected values. We also calculate the, closely related (scaled), correlation functions of Brownian excursions. The known features of this model are summarized in a table in Sec. I.
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 Δ S (defined as the square root of dispersion) diverges as Δ S ∼ [ln(1/|1 − λ|)] 1/2 . For the known behavior of the entanglement entropy S , this divergence results in that the relative fluctuation δ S = Δ S / S vanishes at the critical point, that is, a state with almost nonfluctuating entanglement is attained.
We have analytically obtained all the density matrix elements up to six lattice sites for the spin-1/2 Heisenberg XXZ chain at Δ = 1/2. We use the multiple integral formula of the correlation function for the massless XXZ chain derived by Jimbo and Miwa. As for the spin–spin correlation functions, we have newly obtained the fourth- and fifth-neighbour transverse correlation functions. We have calculated all the eigenvalues of the density matrix and analyse the eigenvalue distribution. Using these results the exact values of the entanglement entropy for the reduced density matrix up to six lattice sites have been obtained. We observe that our exact results agree quite well with the asymptotic formula predicted by the conformal field theory.
We exploit the knowledge of the entanglement spectrum in the ground state of the gapped XXZ spin chain to derive asymptotic exact results for the full counting statistics of the transverse magnetisation in a large spin block of length ℓ . We found that for a subsystem of even length the full counting statistics is Gaussian, while for odd subsystems it is the sum of two Gaussian distributions. We test our analytic predictions with accurate tensor networks simulations. As a byproduct, we also obtain the symmetry (magnetisation) resolved entanglement entropies.
We study the entanglement entropy of a block of contiguous spins in excited states of spin chains. We consider the XY model in a transverse field and the XXZ Heisenberg spin chain. For the latter, we developed a numerical application of the algebraic Bethe ansatz. We find two main classes of states with logarithmic and extensive behavior in the dimension of the block, characterized by the properties of excitations of the state. This behavior can be related to the locality properties of the Hamiltonian having a given state as the ground state. We also provide several details of the finite size scaling.
Block entanglement entropy in the ground state of a quantum spin chain is investigated. The spins have Kitaev-type nearest-neighbor interaction, of strength
Jx or
Jy, through either
x or
y components of the spins on alternating bonds, along with a transverse magnetic field
h. An exact solution is obtained through Jordan-Wigner fermionization, and it exhibits a macroscopically degenerate ground state for
h=0 and a nondegenerate ground state for $h\ensuremath{\ne}0$ for all interaction strengths. For a chain of
N spins, we study the block entropy of a partition of
L contiguous spins. The block entanglement entropy needs the eigenvalues of the
2L-dimensional reduced density matrix. We employ an efficient method that reduces this problem to evaluating eigenvalues of an
L-dimensional matrix, which enables us to calculate easily the block entanglement for large-
N chains numerically. The entanglement entropy grows as
logL at the degeneracy point
h=0 and only for
Jx=Jy. For $h\ensuremath{\ne}0$, the entropy becomes independent of the size, thus obeying the area law. For ${J}_{x}\ensuremath{\ne}{J}_{y}$, the block entropy shows a nonmonotonic behavior for
L<N/2.