arXiv:0910.3868 · Physical Review A
Short-time versus long-time dynamics of entanglement in quantum lattice models
Razmik G. Unanyan, Dominik Muth, Michael Fleischhauer
Abstract
We study the short-time evolution of the bipartite entanglement in quantum lattice systems with local interactions in terms of the purity of the reduced density matrix. A lower bound for the purity is derived in terms of the eigenvalue spread of the interaction Hamiltonian between the partitions. Starting from an initially separable state the purity decreases as $1\ensuremath{-}(t/\ensuremath{\tau}){}^{2}$ (i.e., quadratically in time, with a characteristic timescale $\ensuremath{\tau}$ that is inversely proportional to the boundary size of the subsystem, that is, as an area law). For larger times an exponential lower bound is derived corresponding to the well-known linear-in-time bound of the entanglement entropy. The validity of the derived lower bound is illustrated by comparison to the exact dynamics of a one-dimensional spin lattice system as well as a pair of coupled spin ladders obtained from numerical simulations.