We investigate the entanglement spectrum near criticality in finite quantum spin chains. Using finite size scaling we show that when approaching a quantum phase transition, the Schmidt gap, i.e., the difference between the two largest eigenvalues of the reduced density matrix λ(1), λ(2), signals the critical point and scales with universal critical exponents related to the relevant operators of the corresponding perturbed conformal field theory describing the critical point. Such scaling behavior allows us to identify explicitly the Schmidt gap as a local order parameter.
We present a scaling theory for the entanglement spectrum under an external driving. Based on the static scaling of the Schmidt gap and the theory of finite-time scaling, we show that the Schmidt gap can signal the critical point and be used to estimate the critical exponents no matter in the finite-size scaling region or in the finite-time scaling region. Crossover between the two regions is also demonstrated. We verify our theory using both the one-dimensional transverse-field Ising model and the one-dimensional quantum Potts model. Our results confirm that the Schmidt gap can be regarded as a supplement to the local order parameter.
We numerically investigate the low-lying entanglement spectrum of the ground state of random one-dimensional spin chains obtained after partition of the chain into two equal halves. We consider two paradigmatic models: the spin-1/2 random transverse-field Ising model, solved exactly, and the spin-1 random Heisenberg model, simulated using the density matrix renormalization group. In both cases we analyze the mean Schmidt gap, defined as the difference between the two largest eigenvalues of the reduced density matrix of one of the two partitions, averaged over many disorder realizations. We find that the Schmidt gap detects the critical point very well and scales with universal critical exponents.
The entanglement spectrum describing quantum correlations in many-body systems has been recently recognized as a key tool to characterize different quantum phases, including topological ones. Here we derive its analytically scaling properties in the vicinity of some integrable quantum phase transitions and extend our studies also to nonintegrable quantum phase transitions in one-dimensional spin models numerically. Our analysis shows that, in all studied cases, the scaling of the difference between the two largest nondegenerate Schmidt eigenvalues yields with good accuracy critical points and mass scaling exponents.
A quantum phase transition may occur in the ground state of a system at zero temperature when a controlling field or interaction is varied. The resulting quantum fluctuations which trigger the transition produce scaling behaviour of various observables, governed by universal critical exponents. A particularly interesting class of such transitions appear in systems with quantum impurities where a non-extensive term in the free energy becomes singular at the critical point. Curiously, the notion of a conventional order parameter that exhibits scaling at the critical point is generically missing in these systems. Here we explore the possibility to use the Schmidt gap, which is an observable obtained from the entanglement spectrum, as an order parameter. A case study of the two-impurity Kondo model confirms that the Schmidt gap faithfully captures the scaling behaviour by correctly predicting the critical exponent of the dynamically generated length scale at the critical point.
We study the dynamics of the entanglement spectrum, that is the time evolution of the eigenvalues of the reduced density matrices after a bipartition of a one-dimensional spin chain. Starting from the ground state of an initial Hamiltonian, the state of the system is evolved in time with a new Hamiltonian. We consider both instantaneous and quasi adiabatic quenches of the system Hamiltonian across a quantum phase transition. We analyse the Ising model that can be exactly solved and the XXZ for which we employ the time-dependent density matrix renormalisation group algorithm. Our results show once more a connection between the Schmidt gap, i.e. the difference of the two largest eigenvalues of the reduced density matrix and order parameters, in this case the spontaneous magnetisation.
Entanglement entropy and entanglement spectrum have been widely used to characterize quantum entanglement in extended many-body systems. Given a pure state of the system and a division into regions
A and
B, they can be obtained in terms of the
Schmidt values, or eigenvalues
λα of the reduced density matrix
ρA for region
A. In this paper we draw attention instead to the
Schmidt vectors, or eigenvectors
∣vα⟩ of
ρA. We consider the ground state of critical quantum spin chains whose low energy/long distance physics is described by an emergent conformal field theory (CFT). We show that the Schmidt vectors
∣vα⟩ display an emergent universal structure, corresponding to a realization of the Virasoro algebra of a boundary CFT (a chiral version of the original CFT). Indeed, we build weighted sums
Hn of the lattice Hamiltonian density
hj,j+1 over region
A and show that the matrix elements
⟨vαHn∣vα′⟩ are universal, up to finite-size corrections. More concretely, these matrix elements are given by an analogous expression for
HnCFT=21(Ln+L−n) in the boundary CFT, where
Ln's are (one copy of) the Virasoro generators. We numerically confirm our results using the critical Ising quantum spin chain and other (free-fermion equivalent) models.