The entanglement entropy of the incompressible states of a realistic quantum Hall system is studied by direct diagonalization. The subdominant term to the area law, the topological entanglement entropy (which is believed to carry information about topologic order in the ground state), was extracted for filling factors $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/3$, $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/5$, and $\ensuremath{\nu}=5/2$. The results for $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/3$ and $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/5$ are consistent with the topological entanglement entropy for the Laughlin wave function. The $\ensuremath{\nu}=5/2$ state exhibits a topological entanglement entropy consistent with the Moore-Read wave function.
We study the "entanglement spectrum" (a presentation of the Schmidt decomposition analogous to a set of "energy levels") of a many-body state, and compare the Moore-Read model wave function for the nu=5/2 fractional quantum Hall state with a generic 5/2 state obtained by finite-size diagonalization of the second-Landau-level-projected Coulomb interactions. Their spectra share a common "gapless" structure, related to conformal field theory. In the model state, these are the only levels, while in the "generic" case, they are separated from the rest of the spectrum by a clear "entanglement gap", which appears to remain finite in the thermodynamic limit. We propose that the low-lying entanglement spectrum can be used as a "fingerprint" to identify topological order.
The entanglement entropy of the ν=1/3 and ν=5/2 quantum Hall states in the presence of short-range random disorder has been calculated using direct diagonalization. A microscopic model of electron–electron interaction is used and spin-polarized electrons are confined to a single Landau level and interact with long-range Coulomb interaction. In the case of very weak disorder, the values of topological entanglement entropy are roughly consistent with the expected theoretical results. By considering a broad range of disorder strengths, entanglement entropy was studied in an effort to detect quantum phase transitions. In particular, there is a signature of the transition as the function of the disorder strength for the ν=5/2 state. Prospects of using the density matrix renormalization group to compute the entanglement entropy for larger system sizes are discussed.
We theoretically examine entanglement in fractional quantum hall states, explicitly taking into account and emphasizing the quasi-two-dimensional nature of experimental quantum Hall systems. In particular, we study the entanglement entropy and the entanglement spectrum as a function of the finite layer thickness,
d, of the quasi-two-dimensional system for a number of filling fractions $\ensuremath{\nu}$ in the lowest and the second Landau levels: $\ensuremath{\nu}$ = 1/3, 7/3, 1/2, and 5/2. We observe that the entanglement measures are dependent on which Landau level the electrons fractionally occupy, and find that filling fractions 1/3 and 7/3, which are considered to be Laughlin states, weaken with
d in the lowest Landau level ($\ensuremath{\nu}=1/3$) and strengthen with
d in the second Landau level ($\ensuremath{\nu}=7/3$). For the enigmatic even-denominator $\ensuremath{\nu}=5/2$ state, we find that entanglement in the ground state is consistent with that of the non-Abelian Moore-Read Pfaffian state at an optimal thickness,
d. We also find that the single-layer $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/2$ system is not a fractional quantum Hall state consistent with the experimental observation. In general, our theoretical findings based on entanglement considerations are completely consistent with the results based on wave-function overlap calculations.
The Moore-Read Pfaffian and anti-Pfaffian states have been under scrupulous review as candidates which describe the fractional quantum Hall effect at filling factor 5/2. Quantum states in the universality class of the Moore-Read Pfaffian/anti-Pfaffian have non-trivial intrinsic topological order and support low-energy non-Abelian excitations that have applications in fault-tolerant topological quantum computing schemes. Both states are exact ground states of three-body Hamiltonians that explicitly break particle-hole symmetry. We study the topological order of a competing ansatz state &PSgr;2 that is the exact ground state of a two-body Hamiltonian that preserves particle-hole symmetry. In particular, we calculate the bipartite entanglement entropy and spectra in the lowest Landau level in the spherical geometry for &PSgr; 2. We perform such calculations for a finite number of electrons up to 14. We then extrapolate to the thermodynamic limit the topological entanglement entropy γ as a measure of the topological order of the ansatz and compare to the known value of the Moore-Read Pfaffian/anti-Pfaffian state. We also study the orbital entanglement spectra for &PSgr;2 and compare with the Moore-Read Pfaffian and two-body Coulomb ground states. We show that our extrapolation of γ lies within the uncertainty of the known value of γ for the Moore-Read Pfaffian state, and that the orbital entanglement spectra of &PSgr;2 assumes a similar structure to that of the two-body Coulomb interaction.
Topological ordered phases are gapped states of matter that are characterized by non-local entanglement in their ground state wave functions instead of a local order parameter. In this paper, we review some of the basic results on the entanglement structure of topologically ordered phases. In particular, we focus on the notion and uses of "topological entanglement entropy" in two and higher dimensions, and also briefly review the relation between entanglement spectrum and the spectrum of the physical edge states for chiral topological states. Furthermore, we discuss a curvature expansion for the entanglement entropy which sharpens the nonlocality of topological entanglement entropy.