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arXiv:0908.1724 · Physical Review Letters

Entanglement Entropy and the Fermi Surface

Brian G. Swingle

Published Jul 30, 2010• 197 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Free fermions with a finite Fermi surface are known to exhibit an anomalously large entanglement entropy. The leading contribution to the entanglement entropy of a region of linear size L in d spatial dimensions is S∼L(d-1)logL, a result that should be contrasted with the usual boundary law S∼L(d-1). This term depends only on the geometry of the Fermi surface and on the boundary of the region in question. I give an intuitive account of this anomalous scaling based on a low energy description of the Fermi surface as a collection of one-dimensional gapless modes. Using this picture, I predict a violation of the boundary law in a number of other strongly correlated systems.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.105.050502

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Free fermions with a finite Fermi surface are known to exhibit an anomalously large entanglement entropy. The leading contribution to the entanglement entropy of a region of linear size L in d spatial dimensions is S∼L(d-1)logL, a result that should be contrasted with the usual boundary law S∼L(d-1). This term depends only on the geometry of the Fermi surface and on the boundary of the region in question. I give an intuitive account of this anomalous scaling based on a low energy description of the Fermi surface as a collection of one-dimensional gapless modes. Using this picture, I predict a violation of the boundary law in a number of other strongly correlated systems.
The Fermi surface may be usefully viewed as a collection of (1+11+11+1)-dimensional chiral conformal field theories. This approach permits straightforward calculation of many anomalous ground-state properties of the Fermi gas, including entanglement entropy and number fluctuations. The (1+11+11+1)-dimensional picture also generalizes to finite temperature and the presence of interactions. We argue that the low-energy entanglement structure of Fermi liquid theory is universal, depending only on the geometry of the interacting Fermi surface. We also describe three additional systems in 3+13+13+1 dimensions where a similar mechanism leads to a violation of the boundary law for entanglement entropy.
We investigate the scaling of the entanglement entropy in an infinite translational invariant fermionic system of any spatial dimension. The states under consideration are ground states and excitations of tight-binding Hamiltonians with arbitrary interactions. We show that the entropy of a finite region typically scales with the area of the surface times a logarithmic correction. Thus, in contrast with analogous bosonic systems, the entropic area law is violated for fermions. The relation between the entanglement entropy and the structure of the Fermi surface is discussed, and it is proven that the presented scaling law holds whenever the Fermi surface is finite. This is, in particular, true for all ground states of Hamiltonians with finite range interactions.
We show that entanglement entropy of free fermions scales faster than area law, as opposed to the scaling ${L}^{d\ensuremath{-}1}$ for the harmonic lattice, for example. We also suggest and provide evidence in support of an explicit formula for the entanglement entropy of free fermions in any dimension ddd, $S\ensuremath{\sim}\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}c(\ensuremath{\partial}\ensuremath{\Gamma},\ensuremath{\partial}\ensuremath{\Omega}){L}^{d\ensuremath{-}1}\mathrm{log}L$ as the size of a subsystem $L\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$, where $\ensuremath{\partial}\ensuremath{\Gamma}$ is the Fermi surface and $\ensuremath{\partial}\ensuremath{\Omega}$ is the boundary of the region in real space. The expression for the constant $c(\ensuremath{\partial}\ensuremath{\Gamma},\ensuremath{\partial}\ensuremath{\Omega})$ is based on a conjecture due to Widom. We prove that a similar expression holds for the particle number fluctuations and use it to prove a two sided estimate on the entropy SSS.
Abstract The entanglement entropy of free fermions with a Fermi surface is known to obey a logarithmic scaling and violate the area law in all dimensions. Here, we would like to see how temperature affects the logarithmic scaling behavior. To this end, we compute the entanglement negativity of free fermions using the fermionic partial transpose developed in our earlier paper (Shapourian et al 2017 Phys. Rev . B 95 165101). In one dimension, we analytically derive the leading order term in the finite-temperature entanglement negativity and show how the entanglement negativity indicates a crossover from a quantum entangled state to a classical thermal state, where the entanglement is completely lost. We explain how the one-dimensional result can be generalized to codimension-one Fermi surface of arbitrary shape in higher dimensions. In both one and two dimensions, we check that our analytical results agree with the numerical simulation of free fermions on a lattice.
Entanglement structure serves as a powerful way to characterize quantum many-body phases. This is particularly so for gapless quantum liquids, where entanglement-based tools provide one of the only means to systematically characterize these complicated phases. For example, the Fermi-surface structure of Fermi-liquids is revealed in entanglement entropy by a log-correction to the typical boundary-law scaling of simpler quantum ground-states. In this paper, I analyze the entanglement structure of a disordered, but delocalized diffusive metal. Using a combination of analytic arguments and numerical calculations, I show that, despite having the same number of extended gapless excitations as a clean Fermi-liquid, the diffusive metal exhibits only boundary-law entanglement scaling. This result pinpoints the sharp Fermi-surface structure, rather than the finite density of gapless excitations, as the origin of the log-correction in the Fermi-liquid entanglement scaling.
We investigate the scaling of the entanglement entropy in an infinite translational invariant Fermionic system of any spatial dimension. The states under consideration are ground states and excitations of tight-binding Hamiltonians with arbitrary interactions. We show that the entropy of a finite region typically scales with the area of the surface times a logarithmic correction. The latter can be traced back to the criticality of the models. The relation between the entanglement entropy and the structure of the Fermi surface is discussed, and it is proven, that the presented scaling law holds whenever the Fermi surface is finite. This is in particular true for all ground states of Hamiltonians with finite range interactions.