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 compute the entropy of entanglement of two blocks of
L spins at a distance
d in the ground state of an Ising chain in an external transverse magnetic field. We numerically study the von Neumann entropy for different values of the transverse field. At the critical point we obtain analytical results for blocks of size
L=1 and 2. In the general case, the critical entropy is shown to be additive when $d\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$. Finally, based on simple arguments, we derive an expression for the entropy at the critical point as a function of both
L and
d. This formula is in excellent agreement with numerical results.
The entanglement in quantum XY spin chains of arbitrary length is investigated via the geometric measure of entanglement. The emergence of entanglement is explained intuitively from the perspective of perturbations. The model is solved exactly and the energy spectrum is determined and analyzed in particular for the lowest two levels for both finite and infinite systems. The overlaps for these two levels are calculated analytically for arbitrary number of spins. The entanglement is hence obtained by maximizing over a single parameter. The corresponding ground-state entanglement surface is then determined over the entire phase diagram, and its behavior can be used to delineate the boundaries in the phase diagram. For example, the field-derivative of the entanglement becomes singular along the critical line. The form of the divergence is derived analytically and it turns out to be dictated by the universality class controlling the quantum phase transition. The behavior of the entanglement near criticality can be understood via a scaling hypothesis, analogous to that for free energies. The entanglement density vanishes along the so-called disorder line in the phase diagram, the ground space is doubly degenerate and spanned by two product states. The entanglement for the superposition of the lowest two states is also calculated. The exact value of the entanglement depends on the specific form of superposition. However, in the thermodynamic limit the entanglement density turns out to be independent of the superposition. This proves that the entanglement density is insensitive to whether the ground state is chosen to be the spontaneously
Z2 symmetry broken one or not. The finite-size scaling of entanglement at critical points is also investigated from two different view points. First, the maximum in the field-derivative of the entanglement density is computed and fitted to a logarithmic dependence of the system size, thereby deducing the correlation length exponent for the Ising class using only the behavior of entanglement. Second, the entanglement density itself is shown to possess a correction term inversely proportional to the system size, with the coefficient being universal (but with different values for the ground state and the first excited state, respectively).
We carry out a systematic study of the exact block entanglement in the XXZ spin chain at Δ = −1/2. We present the first analytic expressions for reduced density matrices for n spins in a chain of length L (for n ≤6 and arbitrary but odd L ) for a truly interacting model. The entanglement entropy and the moments of the reduced density matrix and its spectrum are then easily derived. We explicitly construct the 'entanglement Hamiltonian' as the logarithm of this matrix. Exploiting the degeneracy of the ground state, we find the scaling behavior of the entanglement of the zero-temperature mixed state.
We carry out a systematic study of entanglement entropy in relativistic quantum field theory. This is defined as the von Neumann entropy S A = −Tr ρ A logρ A corresponding to the reduced density matrix ρ A of a subsystem A . For the case of a 1+1-dimensional critical system, whose continuum limit is a conformal field theory with central charge c , we re-derive the result of Holzhey et al when A is a finite interval of length in an infinite system, and extend it to many other cases: finite systems, finite temperatures, and when A consists of an arbitrary number of disjoint intervals. For such a system away from its critical point, when the correlation length ξ is large but finite, we show that , where is the number of boundary points of A . These results are verified for a free massive field theory, which is also used to confirm a scaling ansatz for the case of finite size off-critical systems, and for integrable lattice models, such as the Ising and XXZ models, which are solvable by corner transfer matrix methods. Finally the free field results are extended to higher dimensions, and used to motivate a scaling form for the singular part of the entanglement entropy near a quantum phase transition.
It is known that the entropy of a block of spins of size L embedded in an infinite pure critical spin chain diverges as the logarithm of L with a prefactor fixed by the central charge of the correspondent conformal field theory. For a class of strongly random spin chains, it has been shown that the correspondent block entropy still remains universal and diverges logarithmically with an ‘effective’ central charge. By computing the entanglement entropy for a family of models which includes the N -states random Potts chain and the Z N clock model, we give some definitive answer to recent conjectures about the behaviour of this effective central charge. In particular, we show that the ratio between the entanglement entropy in the pure and in the disordered system is model dependent and we provide a series of critical models where the entanglement entropy grows from the pure to the random case.
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.