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arXiv:1302.6222 · Physical Review B

Entanglement entropies in conformal systems with boundaries

Luca Taddia, J. C. Xavier, Francisco Castilho Alcaraz, Germán Sierra

Published Aug 5, 2013• 59 citations
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Abstract

We study the entanglement entropies in one-dimensional open critical systems, whose effective description is given by a conformal field theory with boundaries. We show that, for pure-state systems formed by the ground state or by the excited states associated to primary fields, the entanglement entropies have a finite-size behavior that depends on the correlation of the underlying field theory. The analytical results are checked numerically, finding excellent agreement for the quantum chains ruled by the theories with central charge $c=1/2$ and 1.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.88.075112

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We study the entanglement entropies in one-dimensional open critical systems, whose effective description is given by a conformal field theory with boundaries. We show that, for pure-state systems formed by the ground state or by the excited states associated to primary fields, the entanglement entropies have a finite-size behavior that depends on the correlation of the underlying field theory. The analytical results are checked numerically, finding excellent agreement for the quantum chains ruled by the theories with central charge c=1/2c=1/2c=1/2 and 1.
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Abstract We discuss the Renyi entanglement entropies of descendant states in critical one-dimensional systems with boundaries, that map to boundary conformal field theories in the scaling limit. We unify the previous conformal-field-theory approaches to describe primary and descendant states in systems with both open and closed boundaries. We provide universal expressions for the first two descendants in the identity family. We apply our technique to critical systems belonging to different universality classes with non-trivial boundary conditions that preserve conformal invariance, and find excellent agreement with numerical results obtained for finite spin chains. We also demonstrate that entanglement entropies are a powerful tool to resolve degeneracy of higher excited states in critical lattice models.
We analyze the finite-size corrections to entanglement in quantum critical systems. By using conformal symmetry and density functional theory, we discuss the structure of the finite-size contributions to a general measure of ground state entanglement, which are ruled by the central charge of the underlying conformal field theory. More generally, we show that all conformal towers formed by an infinite number of excited states (as the size of the system $L\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$) exhibit a unique pattern of entanglement, which differ only at leading order (1∕L)2{(1∕L)}^{2}(1∕L)2. In this case, entanglement is also shown to obey a universal structure, given by the anomalous dimensions of the primary operators of the theory. As an illustration, we discuss the behavior of pairwise entanglement for the eigenspectrum of the spin-1∕21∕21∕2 XXZXXZXXZ chain with an arbitrary length LLL for both periodic and twisted boundary conditions.
In a quantum critical chain, the scaling regime of the energy and momentum of the ground state and low-lying excitations are described by conformal field theory (CFT). The same holds true for the von Neumann and Rényi entropies of the ground state, which display a universal logarithmic behavior depending on the central charge. In this Letter we generalize this result to those excited states of the chain that correspond to primary fields in CFT. It is shown that the nth Rényi entropy is related to a 2n-point correlator of primary fields. We verify this statement for the critical XX and XXZ chains. This result uncovers a new link between quantum information theory and CFT.
Here we show that the Rényi entanglement entropy of a region of large size ℓ in a one-dimensional critical model whose ground state breaks conformal invariance (such as in those described by non-unitary conformal field theories), behaves as , where is the effective central charge, c (which may be negative) is the central charge of the conformal field theory and is the lowest holomorphic conformal dimension in the theory. We also obtain results for models with boundaries, and with a large but finite correlation length, and we show that if the lowest conformal eigenspace is logarithmic ( with N nilpotent), then there is an additional term proportional to . These results generalize the well known expressions for unitary models. We provide a general proof, and report on numerical evidence for a non-unitary spin chain and an analytical computation using the corner transfer matrix method for a non-unitary lattice model. We use a new algebraic technique for studying the branching that arises within the replica approach, and find a new expression for the entanglement entropy in terms of correlation functions of twist fields for non-unitary models.
Abstract For two-dimensional conformal field theories (CFTs) in the ground state, it is known that a conformal interface along the entanglement cut can suppress the entanglement entropy from to , where L is the length of the subsystem A , and is the effective central charge which depends on the transmission property of the conformal interface. In this work, by making use of conformal mappings, we show that a conformal interface has the same effect on entanglement evolution in non-equilibrium cases, including global, local and certain inhomogeneous quantum quenches. I.e. a conformal interface suppresses the time evolution of entanglement entropy by effectively replacing the central charge c with , where is exactly the same as that in the ground state case. We confirm this conclusion by a numerical study on a critical fermion chain. Furthermore, based on the quasi-particle picture, we conjecture that this conclusion holds for an arbitrary quantum quench in CFTs, as long as the initial state can be described by a regularized conformal boundary state.