Universal scaling of entanglement estimators of critical quantum systems has drawn a lot of attention in the past. Recent studies indicate that similar universal properties can be found for bipartite information estimators of classical systems near phase transition, opening a new direction in the study of critical phenomena. We explore this subject by studying the information estimators of classical spin chains with general mean-field interactions. In our explicit analysis of two different bipartite information estimators in the canonical ensemble we find that, away from criticality, both the estimators remain finite in the thermodynamic limit. On the other hand, along the critical line there is a logarithmic divergence with increasing system size. The coefficient of the logarithm is fully determined by the mean-field interaction and it is the same for the class of models we consider. The scaling function, however, depends on the details of each model. In addition, we study the information estimators in the micro-canonical ensemble, where they are shown to exhibit a different universal behavior. We verify our results using numerical calculation for two specific cases of the general Hamiltonian.
Universal scaling of entanglement estimators of critical quantum systems has drawn a lot of attention in the past. Recent studies indicate that similar universal properties can be found for bipartite information estimators of classical systems near phase transition, opening a new direction in the study of critical phenomena. We explore this subject by studying the information estimators of classical spin chains with general mean-field interactions. In our explicit analysis of two different bipartite information estimators in the canonical ensemble we find that, away from criticality, both the estimators remain finite in the thermodynamic limit. On the other hand, along the critical line there is a logarithmic divergence with increasing system size. The coefficient of the logarithm is fully determined by the mean-field interaction and it is the same for the class of models we consider. The scaling function, however, depends on the details of each model. In addition, we study the information estimators in the micro-canonical ensemble, where they are shown to exhibit a different universal behavior. We verify our results using numerical calculation for two specific cases of the general Hamiltonian.
Critical phenomena, characterized by abrupt changes in the macroscopic properties of a system, exhibit a profound degree of universality, meaning that vastly different physical systems can display identical behavior near their critical points. This universality is typically understood through the lens of scaling laws and the Renormalization Group theory, which classify critical points into distinct universality classes. This paper proposes and explores the "Entropic Law of Critical Universality," an overarching principle positing that not only do thermodynamic quantities scale universally, but the fundamental information-theoretic measures of a system, particularly entropy in its various forms (thermodynamic entropy, entanglement entropy, Renyi entropy), also conform to universal scaling behaviors that uniquely characterize these universality classes. We review how entanglement entropy exhibits universal logarithmic corrections at quantum critical points, linked to the central charge of underlying conformal field theories. We also discuss how specific entropy behaves non-monotonically near quantum chromodynamics critical points and how entropic measures can identify phase transitions and their classes in various condensed matter systems, including graphene and spin models. The paper synthesizes theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence to demonstrate that entropy serves as a powerful and often more direct probe of the universal properties underlying critical phenomena, offering a comprehensive perspective on the shared information landscape of diverse critical systems.
Non-equilibrium phase transitions of open quantum systems generically exhibit diverging classical but not quantum correlations. Still entanglement -- characterizing the latter correlations -- can be sensitive to the phase transition. Furthermore, mutual information, bounding the total correlations, should exhibit critical scaling at the transition. In this work, we study these quantities in the steady state of open quantum Ising chains with power-law interactions (with the exponent 0≤α≤3) where spins are subject to spontaneous emission. The bulk of this paper is dedicated to a detailed analytical as well as numerical analysis of the infinite-range model (α=0), a model that is closely related to the paradigmatic open Dicke model. Our main findings are that the entanglement, while being finite, peaks, exhibits a kink and takes a universal value at the transition, while the mutual information exhibits critical scaling not only at the transition but well into the ordered phase, underscoring a hidden criticality that is not captured by (two-point) correlations. We consider three distinct entanglement measures: logarithmic negativity; quantum Fisher information; and, spin squeezing. Specifically, we show that the collective spin operator that maximizes the quantum Fisher information can be identified with the \textit{gapless} mode of the phase transition, while the squeezed direction is that of the \textit{gapped} mode. Finally, we investigate power-law interacting models using matrix product states where we find comparable bounds on squeezing even when no phase transition is expected (for larger α), thus the connection to the phase transition does not appear to hold for shorter-range interactions.
We study the generalized mutual information ${\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{I}}_{n}$ of the ground state of different critical quantum chains. The generalized mutual information definition that we use is based on the well established concept of the R\'enyi divergence. We calculate this quantity numerically for several distinct quantum chains having either discrete Z(Q) symmetries (Q-state Potts model with Q=2,3,4 and Z(Q) parafermionic models with Q=5,6,7,8 and also Ashkin-Teller model with different anisotropies) or the U(1) continuous symmetries (Klein-Gordon field theory, XXZ and spin-1 Fateev-Zamolodchikov quantum chains with different anisotropies). For the spin chains these calculations were done by expressing the ground-state wave functions in two special bases. Our results indicate some general behavior for particular ranges of values of the parameter n that defines ${\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{I}}_{n}$. For a system, with total size L and subsystem sizes $\ensuremath{\ell}$ and $L\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\ell}$, the ${\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{I}}_{n}$ has a logarithmic leading behavior given by $\frac{{\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{c}}_{n}}{4}log[\frac{L}{\ensuremath{\pi}}sin(\frac{\ensuremath{\pi}\ensuremath{\ell}}{L})]$ where the coefficient ${\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{c}}_{n}$ is linearly dependent on the central charge c of the underlying conformal field theory describing the system's critical properties.
We numerically investigate classical and quantum correlations in one-dimensional quantum critical systems. The infinite matrix product state (iMPS) representation is employed in order to consider an infinite-size spin chain. By using the infinite time-evolving block decimation algorithm, iMPS ground state wave functions are obtained at critical points for the transverse-field spin-1/2 XY model. From the ground state wave functions, we calculate classical and quantum correlations and mutual information. All of the correlations are found to exhibit a power-law decay with the increments of the lattice distance for both the transition lines of the Ising universality class and the Gaussian universality class. Such power-law scaling behaviors of the correlations manifest the existence of diversing correlation lengths, which means scale invariance. The critical features of the correlations can be characterized by introducing a critical exponent of the power-law decaying correlations. Similar to the critical exponent η of the spin-spin correlation for the universality classes in the transverse-field XY model, we calculate the critical exponents of the two-spin classical and quantum correlations as well as that of the corresponding mutual information. All of the correlations have the same critical exponents, i.e., ηI=ηC=ηD at a critical point, where the superscripts I, C, and D stand for mutual information, classical correlation, and quantum correlation, respectively. Furthermore, the critical exponent η of the spin-spin correlation is shown to relate to η=ηα/2 with α∈{I,C,D}.
The interplay of the constituents of interacting many-body systems may reveal emergent properties on the macroscopic scale which are not inherent to the individual constituents. These properties are expressed in macroscopic observables \ndescribing the state — denoted as the phase of the system. Continuous phase transition between phases are generically manifested in critical behavior, for example, a divergence of a macroscopic observable. The identification of the present phase of a system and the classification of critical phenomena into universality classes are exciting challenges of condensed-matter physics. \nIn this thesis, we use entanglement entropies as macroscopic quantities for the characterization of phases of quantum matter and critical theories. For groundstates of quantum many-body systems the entanglement entropy is a measure of \nthe amount of entanglement between two subsystems. The generic dependence of the entanglement entropy on the size and shape of the subsystems is contained in the well-known boundary law — stating a scaling of the entanglement entropy with the boundary between the two subsystems. We numerically investigate how the coefficient of this dependence reflects quantum phase transitions in simple spin-half bilayer models. \nSubleading terms to the boundary law such as a logarithmic contribution provide universal numbers for the criticality of field theories. We examine free and interacting theories from an entanglement entropy perspective in order to assess the role of the coefficient of the logarithmic correction induced by corners in the subsystems. Beyond its universality, this coefficient also quantifies degrees of freedom of low-lying excitations in the conformal field theory describing a critical point. \nA constant contribution to the boundary law indicates the presence of so-called topological order in the ground state of a many-body system. This extremely useful property can also be identified in classical counterparts of entanglement entropy which we study at the example of various toric code models. To this endeavor, we have designed Monte Carlo techniques which allow for an efficient numerical computation of the constant contribution. In particular, we analyze via entanglement entropies under which conditions remnants of topological order are present in the quantum system at finite temperature and at perturbations from a magnetic field. The major motivation behind this effort is to use topological order for the robust storage of a quantum information — a basic need for the construction of quantum \ncomputers.
We study the Shannon and R\'enyi mutual information (MI) in the ground state (GS) of different critical quantum spin chains. Despite the apparent basis dependence of these quantities we show the existence of some particular basis (we will call them conformal basis) whose finite-size scaling function is related to the central charge c of the underlying conformal field theory of the model. In particular, we verified that for large index n, the MI of a subsystem of size $\ensuremath{\ell}$ in a periodic chain with L sites behaves as $\frac{c}{4}\frac{n}{n\ensuremath{-}1}ln[\frac{L}{\ensuremath{\pi}}sin(\frac{\ensuremath{\pi}\ensuremath{\ell}}{L})]$, when the ground-state wave function is expressed in these special conformal basis. This is in agreement with recent predictions. For generic local basis, we will show that, although in some cases ${b}_{n}ln[\frac{L}{\ensuremath{\pi}}sin(\frac{\ensuremath{\pi}\ensuremath{\ell}}{L})]$ is a good fit to our numerical data, in general, there is no direct relation between bn and the central charge of the system. We will support our findings with detailed numerical calculations for the transverse field Ising model, Q=3,4 quantum Potts chain, quantum Ashkin-Teller chain, and the XXZ quantum chain. We will also present some additional results of the Shannon mutual information (n=1), for the parafermionic ZQ quantum chains with Q=5,6,7, and 8.